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My research goal is to reverse engineer the formation and evolution of the Milky Way, using the snapshot of information recorded in its stars. This is an endeavour across a huge range of temporal and spatial scales. Both individual stellar atmospheres and million star surveys are revealing the connection of present to past, and ultimately allowing us to place the Milky Way in a cosmological context. A cornerstone of my work is in making measurements of stellar ages from stellar spectra. These ages are critical to learn the formation and evolutionary properties of the Galaxy: where stars were born, how they have moved, and how individual abundances quantify the diversity of birth environments. This talk will present my past research, which has set out to link the chemical to the structural evolution of the Milky Way, and lay out specific future directions in the realm of signatures of formation, GALAH and stellar gremlins. |
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