Dark Matter is one of the great outstanding mysteries. Although still in its infancy, the study of merging galaxy clusters has been shown to be one of the best means of determining the nature of dark matter. However to realize this potential requires a consorted effort on the part of astro-nomers and computational theorist, due to ne-cessity to compare simulations and observations of real systems.  UC Davis is a leading center on the observation of merging clusters, having led the investigation of four of the ten confirmed dissociative mergers.  UC Irvine is a leading center on computation/theory of simulating self interacting dark matter physics on astrophysical scales. We established a UC Davis-Irvine workgroup devoted the observation and subsequent simulation of merging galaxy clusters with the directive of determining the nature of dark matter.