Mining the VVV: star formation and embedded clusters
  The aim of this study is to locate previously unknown stellar clusters from
the VISTA variables in the V\'ia L\'actea Survey (VVV) catalogue data. The
method, fitting a mixture model of Gaussian densities and background noise
using the expectation maximization algorithm to a pre-filtered NIR survey
stellar catalogue data, was developed by the authors for the UKIDSS Galactic
Plane Survey (GPS). The search located 88 previously unknown mainly embedded
stellar cluster candidates and 39 previously unknown sites of star formation in
the 562 deg2 covered by VVV in the Galactic bulge and the southern disk.
