Andrew has been a student of optical design, both privately and through the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand for over 10 years. His formal education in optical design consists of an M.Sc. degree completed in 2001 and one year of full-time doctoral study. He is now undertaking his second year of full-time doctoral study with the University of Canterbury as an off-campus student residing in Canberra, Australia. Andrew is supervised in his studies by Professor John Hearnshaw, Dr. William Tobin, Dr. Craig Smith and Mr. Normal Rumsey.

Andrew believes his work has shown that by combining some of the old elegant analytical approaches, e.g. multi-mirror anastigmat design using plate diagram design methods, to modern optical design with current computer technology results can be achieved that would be impossible by the ray tracing/numerical optimization methods commonly employed today.

An indication of the success of a new design method Andrew has developed was exhibited when it was applied to the three mirror/one mirror aspherised class of three mirror anastigmats. This new method was able to map out the entire solution set, uncovering new types of three mirror anastigmat, including systems which were both anastigmatic and had zero Petzval curvature. These solutions had not been previously uncovered (or at least not published), despite the growing interest in the field of three-mirror anastigmats over the last three decades and, in particular, over the last decade.

By applying this new design method to four spherical mirror anastigmats the complete range of possibilities for the family of simplest possible reflecting anastigmats has now been fully explored and will soon be published.

There is still a lot to do in this area. Andrew's plans for the remainder of his Ph.D. thesis will include investigating the application of the methods he has so far developed to solving for reflecting correctors for one and two mirror telescopes (e.g. the four mirror spherical aberration corrector of the Hobby-Ebberly telescope), and to systems with more than "4 plates," a generalization of the work Andrew has done so far.

Update - May 2007
In April of this year, Andrew submitted his thesis, “Simple Four-Mirror Anastigmatic Systems with at Least One Infinite Conjugate,” to the University of Canterbury, just meeting the four year time limit allowed by the university. Gregg Forbes and Roderick Willstrop have been assigned as external examiners.

Andrew has had one paper fully accepted and two provisionally accepted by Optical Engineering (OE), thus satisfying both his novelty and peer review Ph.D. requirements. His Ph.D. degree is expected to be conferred towards the end of the year.

Andrew has accepted a position as Optical Scientist on the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory, which once it is working will be, by some standards, the largest optical telescope in the world. He and his family expect to move to Tucson to take up his new position sometime in June 2007.