Abstract:
Interstellar dust is incredibly important in galaxies....from an ISM perspective, it serves as an important coolant, catalyst for H2 formation, and useful ingredient for star formation.  From a stellar light perspective, it's a huge nuisance (but one that has to be dealt with appropriately).   And in some special cases, we can even use dust features like PAHs to derive physical properties of galaxies.   That said, by and large galaxy formation theorists have mostly swept dust under the rug in simulations.  I'll present some of our recent work on including dust in cosmological galaxy formation simulations.  I'll spend the bulk of the time describing how it impacts our ability to derive physical properties from galaxies via SED fitting techniques, as well as go on a few side-tours of early Universe dusty galaxy formation, dust attenuation and extinction laws in galaxies, and the physics of PAHs in galaxies near and far.