Prof. Daisuke Nagai is an Associate Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Yale, whose research group develops and uses computational models of how galaxies and clusters of galaxies form and grow in the Universe starting from the Big Bang to today. Knowledge of how these cosmic structures develop has the potential to enlighten us about the fundamental physics of the cosmos, including the nature of enigmatic dark energy and dark matter, which make up most of the energy and matter components of our Universe. This requires modeling all important astrophysical processes in simulations of the formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Prof. Nagai’s computational cosmology group is advancing the use of complex cosmic structures, such as galaxies and galaxy clusters, as laboratories for addressing fundamental questions in cosmology.