The standard framework within which cosmological measurements are confronted and interpreted nowadays, called Lambda Cold Dark Matter, presents a Universe dominated by unknown forms of energy and matter. In this seminar I discuss the distribution of dark matter in galaxies and the fact that the local universe turns out to be a marvelous laboratory for examining the nature of dark matter and the fundamental physics involved in structure formation and evolution. I also discuss the development of tests, based on mass modeling of rotation curves, for the validation of dark matter models on galactic scales. These tests have been applied in analyzing the phenomenology of the cusp vs core controversy, and the phenomenon of non-Keplerian rotation curves as modification of the laws of gravity.