A collage of my work on the Milky Way: We can split the light of stars into its wavelengths and extract chemical compositions. This allows us to find stars within the Milky Way that were initially born outside of it. These stars can help us to quantify how important galaxy collisions were for shaping our own Galaxy.

Dr Sven Buder

Fellow in Observational Astrophysics at the Australian National University. Incoming DECRA Fellow (DE24).

CV (Sep 2023) and Potential Projects

I answer fundamental questions with starlight!

The history of our cosmos is written in the starlight

I use starlight when hunting for the lost pages of the Milky Way's formation history (Galactic Archaeology), to understand how stars evolve (Stellar Physics), and how stars create the elements of our periodic table (Origin of the Elements), and even how stars influence the environment of planets that live outside of our Solar system (exoplanets).

To extract starlight, I develop Galactic barcode scanners

Splitting the starlight into its wavelength as stellar spectra - like a stellar rainbow - allows us to measure element absorption lines like "barcodes". I use state-of-the-art modelling and develop pipelines to extract the chemical composition of elements of stars from these barcodes.

A spectrum says more than a 1000 pictures

Through my work, I have become one the leader of Australia's flagship survey for stellar spectroscopy, the "Galactic Archaeologist with HERMES" (GALAH) Survey, and am strongly involved in other spectroscopic surveys that will observe tens of millions of stars (l4MOST Survey) or take ground-breaking observations of edge-on spiral galaxies to compare their history with the Milky Way's (GECKOS Survey).

Galactic Archaeology

Galactic archaeology addresses three key questions of astrophysics, identified in the current decadal plan of Australian astronomy (2016-2025), through observations of stars as galactic “fossils” in our Milky Way: When, where, and how are stars born? How do galaxies form and evolve? What is the origin of the elements?

Figure: Chemodynamics & chemical cartography of the Milky Way

Using chemistry to find survivors of galactic collisions

Different elements of our periodic table are created through different nucleosynthetic channels. Using a clever combination of elemental abundances, I have identified stars that were born outside the Milky Way.

The impact of galaxy collisions on the Milky Way

Together with my collaborator Tobias Buck, I study compare predictions of galactic collisions from cosmological simulations with measurements of our Milky Way.

The GALAH Survey

GALAH is a survey that aims to explore the chemical information of stars in our Milky Way. Can we trace back stars that have been born together via their chemical composition? How much did the Galaxy 'self-pollute' itself chemically? How much formation memory is saved or lost? In the framework of Galactic Archaeology we try to address these questions with The GALAH survey.

State-of-the-art analysis of stellar spectra

with 1D/<3D> Non-LTE spectrum synthesis (mainly Spectroscopy Made Easy) & data-driven models (mainly The Cannon)

My Impact and Publications

Since the commencement of my PhD in 2015, I have developed a wide network of collaborations on a national and international scale by joining existing collaborations and initiating them myself. Within Australia, I have been well connected since 2015 through my work in the Australian-led GALAH collaboration and since 2019 through the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D). I am regarded as one of the most competitive and high-performing early-career researchers in Australian astronomy less than five years post-PhD (Pimbblet 2011), as can be exemplified by the following key numbers:

Publication List and Statistics on the ADS

All of my 4 first-author papers have made an immediate and significant impact within my research field, including Buder et al. (2021) as the most cited paper of MNRAS in 2021:

Buder et al. (2022), MNRAS, 510, 2407 The GALAH Survey: chemical tagging and chrono-chemodynamics of accreted halo stars with GALAH+ DR3 and Gaia eDR3
Buder et al. (2021), MNRAS, 506, 150 The GALAH+ survey: Third data release
Buder et al. (2019), A&A, 624, 19 The GALAH survey: An abundance, age, and kinematic inventory of the solar neighbourhood made with TGAS
Buder et al. (2018), MNRAS, 478, 4513 The GALAH Survey: second data release
Both Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) and Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) are top-tier and quality (Q1) journals within astronomy.

The map of the world with countries colored by the number of collaborations.

My network of collaborators covers more than 20 countries.

About me

Academic Summary

Sven Buder is a Galactic archaeologist and stellar astrophysicist: He uses the light of stars to explore their chemical enrichment. He uses the chemical patterns in combination with the ages, and orbits of stars in our Milky Way to explain its evolution. He got his PhD in 2019 at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg for his work on combining stellar orbit information from the Gaia satellite with high-resolution stellar spectra from the Galactic Archaeology with HERMES Survey. As Fellow at the Australian National University, he is leading the GALAH Survey in its second phase to reach 1 million spectra and uses the data to assess how different populations of the Milky Way formed and what impact events like major mergers had on their shape.

A summary of my PhD: the blackboard that I used for my PhD defence.A summary of my PhD: the blackboard that I used for my PhD defence.

My Curriculum Vitae


Starting 2024 ARC DECRA Fellow (Level C) at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia
May - Sep 2023- Secondment as Research Software Engineer to the Australian Earth-System Simulator National Research Infrastructure (ACCESS-NRI)
2023- Fellow (Level C) at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia
2019-2022 Research Fellow (Level B) at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia
2015-2019 PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany
Workplace: Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg
Graduate Program: Heidelberg Graduate School of Fundamental Physics (HGSFP) and the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmology in Heidelberg (IMPRS-HD)
Aug - Dec 2014 ERASMUS+ exchange semester at Uppsala University, Sweden
2013-2015 Master of Science in Physics at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany
2010-2013 Assistant in Federal Parliamentary Office of Federal Minister of the Interior/Defence Dr Thomas de Maizière (now retired) Berlin, Germany
2010-2013 Bachelor of Science in Physics at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany

Outside of science

Social activities and community services have always been part of my live. I like adventures and sports, my life is always balanced by running, cycling or watching sports: Netball on Mondays, Parkruns on Saturday, Soccer on Sundays, and Triathlon training or Bouldering whenever I can.

Contact and Work With Me

If you want to work with me at the ANU, feel free to contact me:

  • sven.buder@anu.edu.au
  • Mount Stromlo Observatory,
    The Australian National University, Canberra 2611 ACT, Australia
  • Twitter
  • Github

    • I regularly offer student projects. Feel free to contact me about them or have a look at RSAA's potential student projects here (they can be a great starting point for brainstorming):
RSAA's Potential Projects