I use stars as tools to understand the Milky Way's formation. I am particularly interested in understanding the relationship between the ages, chemical abundances and orbital properties of stars, across the Milky Way disk and bulge. I am working with a number of datasets to examine our Galaxy, including GALAH, APOGEE, Kepler and Gaia.

I am also very interested in developing sensible and efficient methodologies to extract information from data and to interpret this (high dimensional) information. We are now in a regime in astronomy where the huge volumes of spectroscopic, photometric and time-domain data call for new and cross-disciplinary analysis approaches. This affords a tremendous opportunity for exploration and creativity.

I am always on the lookout for keen students who want to work with me in this field and I have a number of projects - some of which are mentioned below. Contact me for more information: melissa.ness@columbia.edu

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