Dr. Alex Dehgan joined the State Department as a AAAS fellow, as well. Dr. Dehgan holds a law degree from the University of California as well as a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Chicago. Soon after joining the State Department, he found himself in Iraq working to identify and redirect former weapons scientists into civilian research. Dodging bombs and attacks in and out of the Green Zone, Dr. Dehgan helped Iraqi scientists to establish a natural history museum. He quickly realized that with libraries destroyed, Iraqi scientists and engineers were cut off from science.