RESEARCH / GALACTIC ARCHAEOLOGY
Reconstructing
the history of
our Galaxy.
Every star holds a piece of the past.
My research centres on Galactic archaeology: understanding how the Milky Way formed and evolved. I bring together stellar dynamics, stellar chemistry, and machine learning to read that history from the stars we observe today.
THREE CONNECTED DIRECTIONS
Motions & orbits
A Galaxy in motion.
The positions, velocities, and orbits of stars preserve clues to the processes that shaped the Milky Way. I study Galactic structure and evolution through the motions of stars in the disk, bar, bulge, and halo.
These dynamical records help us investigate the Galaxy’s assembly history, the redistribution of angular momentum, and the connections between stellar populations.
Spectra & chemical signatures
History written in starlight.
Stellar spectra carry chemical information that complements the dynamical record. I use large spectroscopic surveys to measure stellar parameters and elemental abundances and to characterise the Galaxy’s populations.
Connecting chemistry with stellar motion offers a way to explore how those populations formed and how the Milky Way evolved.
Patterns & inference
Learning to read the stars.
Modern surveys provide rich, complex observations of millions of stars. I develop and apply machine-learning methods to extract useful information from spectra, stellar motions, and chemical abundances.
Classification, parameter estimation, and representation learning connect these observations to questions in Galactic archaeology, with attention to their astronomical interpretation.