In an interview with Evelyn Lamb for Scientific American and the Association of Women in Mathematics, IIE-SRF alumna Dr. Amal Fahad shares her experiences adjusting to U.S. culture, studying science as a woman, and addressing the needs of Iraq, her home country. During her IIE-SRF fellowship at Harvard University in 2007, Dr. Fahad covered the entire University of Baghdad campus in a wireless mesh network. "Researchers and faculty members were able to use their machines for the first time and get internet connectivity from their offices. That was impossible before," she says.