Mahmoud Ghannoum, a prominent scientist and the director of the Center for Medical Mycology at Case Western Reserve University and the leading microbiome gut researcher in the world, wants to thank a generous travel agent who was instrumental in helping him immigrate to America almost thirty years ago. It was 1990, and Ghannoum’s country, Kuwait, had just been invaded by Saddam Hussein. With his family staying in a dorm room in England, and his town in Kuwait destroyed and financial assets frozen, Ghannoum traveled to Washington, D.C. for a conference where he had planned to speak. He believed his best chance for establishing a new life was in America, and he hoped to find a job through the conference. But the scientists there told him it was the wrong conference for job hunting, and if he could wait in D.C. for one week, he’d likely get a job at another conference.