My research interests lie in discovering the distribution of stars in positions, velocities, and chemical composition in galaxies to help uncover their formation and evolution history.

Currently I am developing extended action-based distribution functions to uncover correlations between chemistry and the phase-space distribution of stars in the Milky Way stellar halo. I am also interested in the role that stellar streams can play in constraining halo potentials and the impact of resonances and chaos on their form in phase space.

My PhD looked at the orbital structure and dark matter distribution in the outer parts of nearby massive elliptical galaxies using a combination of mass constraints from X-ray observations and dynamical models created with the made-to-measure tool NMAGIC. I also spent some time developing algorithms to optimize residential energy efficiency measures in the context of uncertainty.

I currently tutor 3rd Year Symmetry and Relativity at Somerville College and 1st Year Mechanics at St Edmund Hall.

You find action-based distribution functions for the Milky Way at:
https://github.com/payeldas