Dust evolution: going beyond the empirical
  A key element when modeling dust in any astrophysical environment is a
self-consistent treatment of the evolution of the dust material properties
(size distribution, chemical composition and structure) as they react to and
adjust to the local radiation field intensity and hardness and to the gas
density and dynamics. The best way to achieve this goal is to anchore as many
model parameters as possible to laboratory data. In this paper, I present two
examples to illustrate how outstanding questions in dust modeling have been/are
being moved forward by recent advances in laboratory astrophysics and what
laboratory data are still needed to further advance dust evolution models.
