  As we enter the era of gravitational wave astronomy, we are beginning to
collect observations which will enable us to explore aspects of astrophysics of
massive stellar binaries which were previously beyond reach. In this paper we
describe COMPAS (Compact Object Mergers: Population Astrophysics and
Statistics), a new platform to allow us to deepen our understanding of isolated
binary evolution and the formation of gravitational-wave sources. We describe
the computational challenges associated with their exploration, and present
preliminary results on overcoming them using Gaussian process regression as a
simulation emulation technique.
