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About

Tony Farrell is a leading astronomical instrumentation scientist whose work has transformed how we observe the cosmos. His primary research areas are the design, construction, and commissioning of cutting-edge multi-object spectrographs and fibre-positioning systems for major telescopes. Farrell’s most significant contribution is his central role in developing the HERMES spectrograph for the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), a facility-class instrument designed for Galactic Archaeology. As detailed in his highly cited 2015 paper (93 citations), HERMES enables the GALAH survey, a landmark project to unravel the formation and evolution of the Milky Way by chemically tagging hundreds of thousands of stars. He also spearheaded the MANIFEST prototyping design study (12 citations), a revolutionary multi-object fibre system for the Giant Magellan Telescope that uses ‘Starbug’ robots to position fibres with exceptional versatility. Most recently, Farrell led the Hector instrument (2024, 5 citations), a new integral field spectrograph that began a 15,000-galaxy survey in 2023. His work has been instrumental in providing astronomers with the powerful tools needed to map our galaxy’s history and understand galaxy evolution at an unprecedented scale.