Robyn Sanderson

New data from Gaia and SDSS have challenged the long-held conception of the Milky Way as an equilibrium system, instead painting a picture of a time-dependent Galaxy continually transformed by its cosmological environment. This new picture is as much opportunity as challenge, requiring the development of new approaches to study the dynamics of disequilibrium while offering a panoply of new avenues for tests of dark matter and galaxy formation. I will discuss how connecting state-of-the-art cosmological simulations of galaxy formation with new numerical techniques for modeling the dark and baryonic content of galaxies on one hand, and with well-tested methods for synthetic observations on the other, have opened a new route to understanding the interplay between dark matter and baryons during galaxy assembly. This approach will be extended to nearby galaxies in the decade to come, leading to powerful constraints on theories of both dark matter and galaxy formation.