Nugent was appointed Professor at the
University of Melbourne when he was 34, was elected to the
Australian Academy of Science at 41 and was twice honoured as an
Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellow (2001 and 2006). In 1989, Nugent collaborated with physicist
Stephen W. Wilkins to develop a form of
X-ray optics known as lobster-eye optics. Initially unknown to Wilkins and Nugent, the lobster-eye X-ray optics principle was first proposed for X-rays in the 1970s by
Roger Angel. Nugent and Wilkins' key contribution was to open up an approach to manufacturing these devices using microchannel plate technology. The lobster-eye approach opened the way for X-ray telescopes with a 360 degree view of the sky. "The reason it's got such a high profile is that other X-ray telescopes see a tiny, tiny part of the sky. Although normal telescopes see a small part of the sky, X-ray telescopes see an even smaller part. The beauty (of the new telescope) is that it actually expands that field of view hundreds of times," Nugent said. A lobster-eye X-ray satellite was successfully launched on 25 July 2020 from the
Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. The lobster-eye X-ray satellite will be the world's first in-orbit space exploration satellite equipped with such imaging technology. Nugent became interested in how to measure optical phase without using interferometry. This has led to new approaches to
radiography, electron and optical microscopy. He was the founding researcher of microscopy company IATIA, created to commercialise the work of himself and his two former PhD students, David Paganin and Anton Barty, in
quantitative phase imaging (QPI). IATIA’s QPI technology was able to extract phase and wavefront information from light and other wave-like radiations using conventional imaging technology, such as standard digital cameras, without the need for special optical components. From 2005, Nugent was a Member of the Board of Directors and Chair of IATIA’s Audit Committee. The company traded for 10 years but failed in 2010 due to the
2008 financial crisis. IATIA was awarded the 2006 Australian Technology Showcase Patrons Award. When Nugent's wife Dr Eroia Barone-Nugent developed and instigated the Growing Tall Poppies Program (2008) to increase and sustain girls in science beyond year 10 Nugent quickly included and this program in his scientific endeavors. With a focus on supporting young Australians in science his wife Dr Eroia Barone-Nugent was pivotal in showing how science centers of excellence could work with schools and curriculum to deliver on their outreach responsibilities Growing Tall Poppies Program (GTP) in 2008. The purpose of the student-scientist partnership program is to highlight the role of physics in solving real-world issues, and to help students become “tall poppies” in science. Nugent was appointed part-time director of the
Australian Synchrotron from 2011-12. He had previously served as a member of its national scientific advisory board and its board of directors. From 2005-2012, Nugent was director of the
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science, based at the
University of Melbourne, where he drove the development of coherent X-ray diffraction methods for imaging biological structures using
X-ray free-electron lasers. He was Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (research) at
La Trobe University from January 2013 to December 2018. Nugent has been a member of the
ARC Expert Advisory Committee for Physics, Chemistry and Geosciences, and the international scientific advisory board of
Elettra Sincotrone Trieste, the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Centre in
Taiwan, and the
European X-ray Free Electron Laser based in
Hamburg. He was a chief investigator for the ARC Centre for Advanced Molecular Imaging. He is also a board member at
National Computational Infrastructure, the Advisory Committee on Policy Matters,
Australian Academy of Science and the National Centre for Indigenous Genomics. == ANU Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) ==