Kristopher Charles Youakim Guest researcher

I have been a postdoctoral researcher in the astronomy department at Stockholm University since Nov 2020, after obtaining a PhD from Potsdam University in Germany.

My main field of research is galactic archaeology, which is the study of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy using present day observations of stars. Our Galaxy has built-up over time by the merger of many smaller galaxies and clusters, who's stars get stripped and mixed into our Galaxy. The signatures of these past mergers are still visible today in the motions and chemical compositions of these stars. By studying the complex mixture of populations of stars in our Galaxy, we can look back in time to infer the conditions and environments in which these stars were born in the early Galaxy.

My current research interests include disentangling the accretion history of the Milky Way stellar halo, by using dynamical and chemical information of stars to associate them to their birth clusters and progenitor galaxies.