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Galaxies are complicated beasts - many physical processes operate simultaneously, and over a huge range of scales in space and time. As a result, accurately modeling the formation and evolution of galaxies over the lifetime of the universe presents tremendous technical challenges - challenges that require a computer like Blue Waters to adequately resolve. In this talk I will describe some of the important unanswered questions about galaxy formation and present simulations, performed on Blue Waters, of a large population of galaxies that formed in the earliest ages of the Universe. These galaxies will be detectable by the James Webb Space Telescope when it is launched in a few years, and will provide critical clues about the formation of the first supermassive black holes, the first generations of metal-enriched stars, and the topology of reionization and its effects on later generation of galaxy formation.
