Galactic Archaeology in the Gaia Era 

Our universe is made up of many billions of galaxies yet we are still trying to figure out how they form, evolve, and assemble themselves over cosmic time. This question of galaxy formation and assembly is among the most fundamental in modern astronomy yet the answer still eludes us to this day. The Milky Way is an optimal laboratory for answering the questions of galaxy formation and assembly because it is one of the only systems to date where we can obtain detailed and precise data on the positions, motions, and chemical composition for billions of individual stars. Using our Galaxy as a sandbox for exploring galaxy formation and assembly is the essence of Galactic archaeology.  In this talk I will review the work my group has done on uncovering the structure and assembly history of our Galaxy using large-scale astronomical surveys.