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Fakhrul ultimately plans to return to Dhaka and continue teaching materials science. But she also has an additional goal: to help advance materials science research back home.
During her third year at MIT, Fakhrul attended the IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School — a school for approximately 85 graduate students from around the world studying magnetism, held in Spain. A winning entry in a group project competition gave Fakhrul the opportunity to travel to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to visit some of their research labs.
“What I really took back from my visit to IIT Delhi is how creative people can be when they have such limited resources,” Fakhrul says. She cites the availability of instrumentation for materials science research: What may be readily available and easy to order at MIT might be challenging to acquire in Dhaka or Delhi.
“[At IIT Delhi], they had a lot of parts made from local suppliers, and then they imported other parts, and then made a whole thin-film deposition system. It was at least three to four times cheaper. I thought that was really incredible because that’s something I would want to do once I go back to Bangladesh,” Fakhrul says.
Fakhrul actively works with students at her alma mater as a mentor, and hopes to continue that after returning home as well.
“Whenever I get some time off from work, I also like helping students in Bangladesh apply [to graduate programs in the United States],” she says. In total, Fakhrul mentors 10 students, six of whom are currently pursuing PhDs in the United States. At the start of the 2018-19 academic year, one of her mentees began his graduate studies at MIT.
“The feeling was so incredible, because I was the first person from materials science from my school to come here,” Fakhrul says. “It’s really nice when you get to help other people make their dreams come true as well.”
