Exploiting the data from the Hipparcos and Gaia missions to address a range of research questions in astronomy:

• Mapping the young stellar populations and tracing recent star formation history in the solar neighbourhood
• Structure and kinematics of nearby open clusters
• Tracing substructure in the halo of the Milky Way
• Solar system: tracing the Sun's birth cluster; effects of encounters with other stars on the Oort cloud
• Hypervelocity stars
• Advanced statistical methods applied to the interpretation of astrometric data.

Other topics:

Binary population in the Sco OB2 association

Instrumentation related:

• Modelling and handling the effects of radiation damage (by solar wind protons) to CCDs on the astronomical space missions
• Attitude reconstruction for the Gaia mission
• Adaptive optics simulations for the ESO SINFONI instrument