Vivian U (University of California, Riverside) A Near-Infrared Perspective of the Dusty Cores in Local Galaxy Mergers The co-evolution of black hole and their host galaxies is one of the keys to understanding the driving force of galaxy evolution, and this hinges largely on having a proper technique with an instrument capable of probing scales equivalent to the black hole's sphere of influence. The Keck Telescope features an adaptive optics (AO) system that allows near-diffraction-limited observations in the near-infrared (NIR) using natural and laser guide stars. Coupled with the integral field spectrograph OSIRIS, this allows us to probe small-scale stellar and gas kinematics in the dusty cores of nearby (ultra-)luminous infrared galaxies ((U)LIRGs) at HST resolution or better from the ground. Here we present the results from our Keck AO NIR integral-field survey of the nuclear regions of 17 local (U)LIRGs undergoing major mergers. Our findings characterize and address the nature of nuclear disks, outflows driven by AGN and starbursts, as well as black hole-galaxy bulge scaling relations as galaxies collide and merge. These analyses pave the way for a more in-depth look at the interplay between the central black holes and their host galaxies in the TMT era.