VINE is a particle based astrophysical simulation code. It uses a tree structure to efficiently solve the gravitational N-body problem and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to simulate gas dynamical effects. The code has been successfully used for a number of studies on galaxy interactions, galactic dynamics, star formation and planet formation and given the implemented physics, other applications are possible as well.

Emerge (Empirical ModEl for the foRmation of GalaxiEs) populates dark matter halo merger trees with galaxies using simple empirical relations between galaxy and halo properties. For each model represented by a set of parameters, it computes a mock universe, which it then compares to observed statistical data to obtain a likelihood. Parameter space can be explored with several advanced stochastic algorithms such as MCMC to find the models that are in agreement with the observations.