Rate My Professor Simon Ellis

Simon Ellis is a Professor at Macquarie University and Head of the Instrument Science Group at Australian Astronomical Optics, responsible for research and development of novel technologies for astronomical instruments. He earned his PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Birmingham in 2003, with a thesis entitled "The Evolution of High Redshift Clusters of Galaxies." His professional career includes positions as Research Fellow at the Anglo-Australian Observatory (2003-2006) and Instrument Scientist there (2006-2008), Research Fellow at the University of Sydney (2008-2010), Instrument Scientist at the Australian Astronomical Observatory (2010-2017), Instrument Science Manager (2017-2018), and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney (2016-2019).

Ellis's research focuses on astrophotonics, including OH suppression techniques for near-infrared astronomy, silicon photonics, and instrumentation development. He was the commissioning scientist for the first two instruments worldwide using fibre Bragg gratings for OH suppression and currently serves as Lead Instrument Scientist for the MAVIS imager and spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope. Additional interests include galaxy and cluster evolution and positronium astrophysics. He has authored the first textbook on astrophotonics and key publications such as "The case for OH suppression at near-infrared wavelengths" (2008), "Suppression of the near-infrared OH night-sky lines with fibre Bragg gratings - first results" (2012), "A complex multi-notch astronomical filter to suppress the bright infrared sky" (2011), "Photonic ring resonator filters for astronomical OH suppression" (2017), "Astrophotonics: recent and future developments" (2024), and contributed to the "2023 Astrophotonics Roadmap" (2023). With 109 research outputs, 1794 citations, and h-index 25, Ellis has significantly influenced photonic technologies in astronomy. He has given invited lectures at conferences including ULTIMATE-Subaru workshops (2016, 2018), POSMOL plenary (2017), and others.