New insights into galaxy formation and evolution

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Buried within our galactic backyard is a treasure trove of information about how our galaxy, the Milky Way, formed and evolved. The field of "galactic archaeology" sets out to uncover and decipher the implications of this information both for our galaxy and galaxy formation in general. In the next decade, galactic archaeology is about to undergo a revolution as the European Space Agency's Gaia mission will provide exquisite new observations of the stellar positions of over a billion stars and true motions of tens of millions. Combined with upcoming surveys of the chemical signatures of stars (stars with similar chemical signatures were likely formed together) we will then be able to piece together their evolution back in time. The first part of my research program outlines a series of simulations on parallel computers that will introduce new levels of fidelity into our studies of galactic archaeology, and enable us to model upcoming data from the Gaia survey (and others) with great precision. Step-by-step I will increase physical complexity so as to eventually include all the dominant physical processes present in the Milky Way.