Sarah Pennypacker is a fourth year undergraduate history major and pre-med student. She is expected to graduate in the Spring of 2018, and plans to attend medical school with the hope of specializing in cardiothoracic surgery. Over the course of her studies, she has participated in multiple research projects, under both the UCLA BRITE Center and physics professor Dr. Katsushi Arisaka. Additionally, she has become particularly interested in nineteenth century America and the modern Middle East—both periods filled with intricacies that have lasting consequences beyond their defined years. Enriched by this sort of dual prospective, she believes that understanding someone’s life story and culture is a key element in finding a way to help them. Currently, she is completing a senior honors thesis under the history department, with the help of her advisor, Professor Joan Waugh. Her research accesses the significance of the lives of two women spies during the American Civil War: Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy in Richmond, and Rose O’Neal Greenhow, a Confederate spy in Washington. More specifically, her research focuses on how and why these two women departed from traditional feminine roles and demeanor, and how they deployed “female wiles” to conduct intelligence gathering that significantly impacted the course of the war.