New Statistical Techniques for Galactic Archaeology

A revolution is under way in stellar astronomy, with new space satellites and Australian survey instruments about
to reveal the composition of millions of stars. These data hold the promise of disentangling the origin of our
Galaxy through identification of star-forming groups that have long ago dispersed into our Galaxy. We can also
learn about the nuclear and stellar processes that were active in long dead stars, and hence explain why the
Universe is the way it is. This project aims to extend the powerful Minimum Message Length method, never
before used in astronomy, to handle this data. We will be in a unique position to extract fundamental new
knowledge from the data that will arrive in the next 1 to 5 years.