Stars in galaxies are observed to be moving faster than expected if galaxies are only made up of normal material, like stars and gas. Scientists across multiple areas of research have been working to find the explanation for these high speeds. The leading idea is that there exists unseen, ?dark matter? that makes up most of the material inside galaxies. This extra material greatly increases the gravitational pull on stars, making them move faster than expected. However, astronomers and physicists still do not know the exact nature of this ?dark matter?. This program will build new models of our Galaxy that will use upcoming surveys to measure how much "dark matter" there is and test its properties. These models will be the first to include new knowledge about nearby galaxies, like the Magellanic Clouds. The Magellanic Clouds are visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere and are adding a lot of ?dark matter? into our Milky Way. This program will make these models accessible to the entire community. This will allow the public and scientists to model the motions of stars in our Milky Way for themselves. The investigator created the Tucson Initiative for Minority Engagement in Science and Technology Program (TIMESTEP). The investigator will expand the TIMESTEP program by creating new activities in support of student career paths in the areas of Science Policy, Outreach, and Communication. The investigator will calibrate the properties of the dark matter wake induced by the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) under different assumptions of the dark matter particle?s nature?cold dark matter (CDM) vs. fuzzy dark matter (FDM) and self-interacting dark matter (SIDM). The investigator will use a basis field expansion technique (Self-Consistent Field Method; SCF) to analytically quantify the CDM dark matter distribution of the Milky Way + LMC. This technique will be validated using cosmological zooms of analogous Milky Way + massive satellite systems in the Auriga CDM cosmological simulations. With these simulations and analytic realizations, a new framework will be established for current/upcoming high-precision kinematic data of halo tracers (satellites, stellar streams, globular clusters, and halo stars). In particular, this project will tackle fundamental questions in astrophysics: 1) Can we observe dynamical friction in action and what might this tell us about the nature of the dark matter particle? 2) What is the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way? This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.