Serap Savari grew up in New York, where she had her first exposure to the fun side of math and science. She spent a significant fraction of her life as a college student at MIT, a small technical university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She obtained the S.B. degree in electrical engineering in 1990, the S.M. degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 1991, the S.M. degree in operations research in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 1996. Upon retiring from her student career, she took up a similar line of work by becoming a Member of Technical Staff in the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs. Her research interests include data compression, information theory, computer and communication systems, and data networks. She has continued to maintain another link to student life by participating in a few of Lucent's educational programs. In some of her free time, she practices handstands and other yoga poses. She also likes to experiment with different dance forms and has taken numerous jazz, ballet, modern, flamenco, and swing dance classes.