DoctorC.Clare Worley

I pursue research in the field of Galactic Archaeology, which seeks to unravel the formation and evolution history of the Milky Way. I do this using a variety of astronomical data including spectra, photometry and asteroseismology.

Key projects in which I am involved that further this investigation are:

* Statistical analysis of chemical abundance distributions in stellar populations using techniques such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Bayesian Inference and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE).
* Galactic Chemical Evolution studies with chemical yields compared to big observational datasets
* Automated determination of stellar parameters and chemical abundances
* Characterisation of binary systems
* Detailed stellar parameter and chemical abundance analysis of benchmark stars

I'm an active member of 4MOST and WEAVE, which are large scale multi-object spectrographs on the 4m telescopes, VISTA@ESO in the southern hemisphere and WHT@ING in the northern hemisphere respectively. Analysis of the high and medium resolution spectra from both projects will characterise to never before detail the chemical distribution within the Milky Way.

A critical mission that has significantly advanced our understanding of the Milky Way is the ESA Gaia mission which is measuring precise positions and motions of over 1 billion stars in the Milky Way.

Combining the kinematic with chemical information from these projects will result in a chemico-kinematic, multi-dimensional chart of the Milky Way against which to test our theories of galactic formation and evolution.