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About

Urs Klauser is a leading astronomical instrumentation engineer whose work has been pivotal in advancing wide-field, multi-object spectroscopy. His primary research areas center on the design, integration, and deployment of complex fibre-optic positioning systems for major ground-based telescopes. Klauser’s most significant contribution is his central role in the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) at the Anglo-Australian Telescope, a facility-class instrument designed for Galactic Archaeology. His work on the HERMES project, detailed in his most-cited paper (93 citations), has been instrumental in enabling the GALAH survey, a landmark effort to reconstruct the formation and evolution of the Milky Way by analyzing the chemical fingerprints of a million stars. Beyond HERMES, Klauser has been a driving force behind the development of innovative ‘Starbug’ fibre-positioning robots. He led the engineering for the TAIPAN instrument, a prototype for the MANIFEST facility on the Giant Magellan Telescope, demonstrating a scalable, high-precision approach to positioning hundreds of optical fibres. This work, documented in several high-impact publications, positions Klauser as a key architect of next-generation spectroscopic surveys, providing the mechanical backbone for transformative discoveries in stellar and galactic astrophysics.