How much dust is there in protoplanetary discs?

Abstract: Planet formation is thought to originate from the growth of solids (so-called ‘dust’) within protoplanetary discs. One of the most basic questions one might ask about discs is therefore is “How much dust is there?”. Despite its fundamental nature, it turns out that answering this question, by measuring the dust mass robustly, is difficult. I present a novel machine learning method that  enables one to combine spectral and imaging observations of protoplanetary discs and hence make reliable determinations of the dust mass, along with other key disc properties.