Nadine Soliman, speaking in the Institute for Advanced Study's astrophysics seminar series, argues that dust grains deserve to be modeled as a dynamically distinct component rather than assumed to move in lockstep with gas. As simulations of galaxies and the interstellar medium reach finer resolution, she asks which microphysical processes actually need explicit treatment, and makes the case that dust, which interacts with radiation, chemistry, and thermal balance simultaneously, is the natural starting point. Drawing on simulations and analytical work, she examines AGN-driven winds, star-forming molecular clouds, and magnetized dusty plasmas, showing that letting dust decouple from gas changes the structure of radiation-driven outflows, alters star formation efficiency and composition, and opens new routes for seeding cosmic magnetic fields. The talk, delivered in Bloomberg Lecture Hall, traces how grain-scale physics propagates upward to shape large-scale astrophysical structure.