Prof. Charli Sakari (San Francisco State University)

Metal-poor stars provide important tracers of the early Universe, and can be used to understand the assembly histories of large galaxies like the Milky Way. The R-Process Alliance (RPA) is a collaboration focused on understanding the early nucleosynthesis of the heaviest elements in the periodic table, which form via the rapid, or r-, neutron-capture process. Abundances of r-process elements shed light on where and when these elements were created, the prevalence of r-process enhancement, and the assembly history of the Milky Way. In this talk I will highlight some of the exciting Galactic archaeology work my students and I are doing at San Francisco State University, including work with RPA targets in the Milky Way field. I will also talk about our work to extend these analyses beyond the Milky Way, to the globular clusters in the Andromeda Galaxy, via integrated light (IL) spectroscopy.