Bio
Liam McSherry is the Space Instrumentation engineering lead for electronics, software, and FPGAs.
The University of Oxford's Space Instrumentation Laboratory specialises in building remote-sensing instruments for space missions. By working closely with Oxford's planetary and atmospheric science research groups, and with its extensive in-house facilities, the Space Instrumentation Laboratory supports the entire mission lifecycle from concept through manufacturing, assembly, integration, and test to launch and science operations. Its sister Infrared Multilayer Laboratory fabricates thin-film filters and optical components for its instruments and many others.
McSherry's professional focus is on planning, architecture, and technical leadership in building advanced radiofrequency, infrared, signal processing, and flight systems for challenging environments. His research focuses on enabling technologies for space missions.
McSherry's background is in electrical and electronic engineering with much of his prior work being in industrial research, including the development of ultraminiaturised satellite Earth stations, control systems for trapped-ion quantum computing, CRPA-based receivers for electronic counter-countermeasures, and high-speed radiofrequency direction-finding, among other areas. He has been part of the Space Instrumentation Laboratory since 2024 and has contributed to missions and concepts including (launched 2025), (2025), (2028–29), and LightShip-1 (~2032). In his role as engineering lead, McSherry is responsible for delivering the systems that control the Laboratory's instruments, capture science data, and process it for return to Earth, as well as related ground-support equipment.
Ongoing projects
Happy Hour. Most important of McSherry's projects is co-running Happy Hour, a monthly social night hosted in AOPP to encourage research colleagues to get together, talk, and socialise in a casual environment with drinks, snacks, and good vibes. One of McSherry's focuses with Happy Hour is improving sustainability and corporate social responsibility by focusing on using small and local businesses as suppliers.
Modular Infrared Molecules and Ices Sensor (MIRMIS). McSherry is part of the Space Instrumentation Laboratory's Comet Interceptor team working to deliver MIRMIS, a hyperspectral (0.6–25μm) infrared imager that will launch in mid-to-late 2028 or early 2029 and will target the first in-situ observation of a dynamically new long-period comet, giving scientists a time capsule view billions of years into the past and the formation of our Solar system.
Mission-tailored ASICs through maskless photolithography. McSherry leads a European Space Agency (ESA)-funded international consortium aiming to alleviate EEE supply chain concerns by developing a radiation-hardened chip fabrication process which, by using maskless exposure techniques, can deliver custom chips in days rather than months and at much-reduced cost. As part of this, the consortium aims to develop Europe's first open-access radiation-hard .
Novel sensing in the far infrared for deep space. McSherry leads an early-stage research project aiming to build highly spectrally selective solid-state sensors for the far infrared, a key area of spectrum for proposed and upcoming (~2042) missions to the icy bodies of the Solar system.
Temporal aspects for hard-real-time software. McSherry leads an early-stage research project investigating the treatment of temporal constraints as a first-class concern in programming languages, with the aim of developing a compiler and deterministic processor core that can be used for safety-critical software that must meet hard deadlines (i.e. where missing a deadline is a catastrophic failure).