Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Dr. Christopher Norfolk awarded the Byars Prize for Excellence in Teaching Engineering Fundamentals

Dr. Christopher Norfolk was recently presented the Byars Prize for Excellence in Teaching Engineering Fundamentals from the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences. This award honors Dr. Norfolk’s skills as a teacher, mentor, and one who is respected by students and faculty alike. It also acknowledges the many accolades he receives from our students each year.

Dr. Norfolk, who was promoted to Senior Lecturer this year, teaches Introduction to Chemical Engineering (ChE 1300) and Unit Operations Lab courses (ChE 3070 and ChE 4070).

Below you will find Dr. Norfolk’s teaching philosophy in his own words:

“My approach to teaching is likely different from many of the excellent lecturers and professors that practice the trade at Clemson. I find the traditional role of ‘teacher’ to be too confining to capture all of the things I am trying to do in my position. Instead, I consider myself to be the leader of a group of students, and I try to apply principals of good leadership to my interactions with my team. I find this paradigm to be very helpful.

The first thing any team requires is a clearly defined goal. The implicit goal for every class is that every student master the course material. However, I also spend a lot of time clearly communicating expectations, including allowing all students access to years’ worth of old exams, so that the final expectations are clear.

Another characteristic of a good leader is the realization that the success of the leader lies in maximizing the potential of the team. My greatest possible success is not in being a popular instructor, or in handling a large number of students, but in the extent to which my students master the course material. This philosophy suggests several tactical choices that I tend to use with my students. The first isto strive to meet each student ‘where they are,’ rather than where I think they should be. This means that the methods that I employ in the classroom are continually changing to accommodate learning styles of students, including hybrid in-person/online classes, in class exercises, providing opportunities for individual and group practice, etc.

I have also revised our Unit Ops Lab Manual, which more closely follows the current structure of the lab courses and gives students explicit instruction on the proper methods to estimate experimental uncertainty, based on the methods used by NIST. The manual also provides examples of the type and level of technical reports we expect from them. It is a critical resource to support our most important courses.

I view the task of learning as primarily belonging to the students; they are doing the hard work, and I am merely guiding them along the path. Part of my role is to remove, where possible, impediments to their work, so that they can progress as efficiently as possible. In this, timely communication is key, and so I make myself as available as possible to all students, both in-person and on-line; my students all have my cell phone number to facilitate this. I find this to be one of the most appreciated aspects of my teaching style. I also make it clear to students that I will support them through the learning process, doing whatever it takes to reinforce their efforts. With the knowledge that they have virtually limitless resources available to them, the responsibility for their progress in the course vests with the them. I find that forcing students to face this responsibility encourages more professional behaviors.

Since the students are doing all of the hard work of learning, part of my role as a leader is to keep them motivated. The students will get out of the course in proportion to the effort they put into the course, and so if I can keep them dedicated to the material, they will achieve the goal of mastery to a greater extent. This requires me to answer the ‘why’ question, rather than the ‘how’ question, keeping the purpose of the course as a central aspect. But in motivating students, as in motivating any team, I find that personal connection is most effective. As the saying goes (attributed to Theodore Roosevelt), ‘Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.’

Finally, I do what I can to model leadership and dedication for my students. I am continually encouraging them to give more to the class, to press through their limits, and to reach the next level of understanding of the material. So I strive never to falter when they ask me for more, either in class or out, and I do my best to put none of my other activities above the needs of any student. I want to inspire loyalty in my team, the idea being that students can see my dedication to them in our everyday interactions. I want them to tirelessly work for me because they know I will tirelessly work for them.”

Germinating Solutions

By Paul Alongi | Photography by Josh Wilson | 

Yeast might be Earth’s most underappreciated lifeform. These single-celled members of the fungi kingdom get plenty of credit for turning barley into beer, grapes into wine and wheat into bread. But their range might not be limited to the blue planet for long.

Mark Blenner, the McQueen-Quattlebaum Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering at Clemson University, is engineering yeast to do things nature hasn’t yet figured out.

The potential is wide-ranging. Blenner is helping yeast produce two very different products —omega-3 supplements and polyester — that astronauts could use on missions to Mars. He is also using yeast to explore new ways of developing drugs, and to create sensors that would help search for radiation from nuclear weapons production.

For Blenner, the research is a platform to teach students how to ask and answer critical questions. He also sees his work as a potential catalyst for a cutting-edge industry that South Carolina could lead.

His colleagues are recognizing his work. Last spring, Blenner was named Clemson University Junior Researcher of the Year. He conducted research in the fall at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Over the summer, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the nation’s highest honor bestowed on young faculty.

“I use him as an example to my current students,” says Scott Banta, a professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University and Blenner’s former Ph.D. adviser. “If you want to go into academia, this is what it should look like.”

Blenner likens his work to installing software in a computer. He and his students use bacteria to construct DNA — the software — and then install it into the yeast — the hardware — to create the desired molecule.

The scientific community’s advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis over the past 10 years have helped break open the field to new possibilities, Blenner says.

“I think we’re going to see a lot more solutions to problems that are microbial based,” Blenner says. “And I think it’s going to be part of the solution to helping us survive on Mars and other planets.”

YEAST IN SPACE

The work that has earned Blenner the most headlines focuses on how yeast could help astronauts reach Mars and survive once they land. Yeast would act as a recycling center, allowing astronauts to reuse molecules that are plentiful on Earth but will be precious beyond the atmosphere that sustains life.

One area where Blenner sees promise is using yeast to produce omega-3 fatty acids. The essential nutrients are critical to the brain and help prevent heart disease. On Earth, omega-3 fatty acids are a dwindling resource available mostly from fish, and from supplements, such as fish oil, but their shelf life is limited to about two years. Any supplies carried from Earth wouldn’t be sufficient for a mission that lasts longer.

This is where a species of yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica, would come into play. The yeast would be genetically modified to create omega-3 fatty acids and would need two main ingredients to grow: nitrogen and carbon. Astronauts could produce both from their own bodies.

For nitrogen, they could harvest urea from urine. Carbon could come from the carbon dioxide in their own breath or the Martian atmosphere. Put it all together, and astronauts could make their own nutritional supplements to keep themselves healthy planets from home.

Another strain of Yarrowia lipolytica could be engineered to create biopolymer PHA, a type of polyester similar to the kind used to make clothes. But instead of using the polyester to weave double-knit suits, astronauts could feed it into a 3D printer to make tools.

Blenner says the NASA-funded project is progressing well and that his major focus now is on yeast cells themselves: “One of the common ingredients in microbial growth media is something called yeast extract, which is basically partially degraded yeast cells. You need a mountain of cells to get a product from the cells, and that’s a lot of good carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and oxygen that could be put back into the manufacturing process. I’m evaluating now the chemical composition of the different cell biomasses and seeing how much reusability you can get out of them before perhaps toxic things start to accumulate in that biomass.”

ENGINEERING BETTER MEDICINES

Blenner’s work with yeast could also help tease new drugs out of plants.

Many plants hold promising pharmaceutical compounds but in quantities too small to develop into marketable drugs. Plant growth cycles are slow and subject to seasonal and regional variation in output and quality. Further, land use for the compounds and other natural products often competes with land use for much-needed food.

The antimalarial drug artemisinin, for example, takes over 12 months to produce from planting to extraction, whereas the same can be done in a week with yeast.

Blenner says that placing a plant gene in yeast can be done inexpensively. However, the yeast often fails to make protein correctly, and the critical challenge in the new research is to figure out why, he says. The team plans to analyze the genetically modified yeast with bioinformatics — computer algorithms that help researchers understand large sets of biological data.

“In this case, we’re looking at changes in the number of different RNA molecules that are made in each cell,” Blenner says. “RNA molecules are the precursor to making protein. We can use bioinformatics tools to count the number of RNA molecules for each gene in the entire genome of the cell, and if we know what most of those genes do, we can start to understand what the cell does in response to making new proteins.”

The antimalarial drug artemisinin, for example, takes over 12 months to produce from planting to extraction, whereas the same can be done in a week with yeast.

SEARCHING FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The Blenner team is also collaborating on research aimed at creating devices that sound like they could have come out of the latest James Bond epic. The devices would be disguised, maybe as leaves, and search for evidence of nuclear-weapons production.

But before it’s ready for the real-life 007, researchers need to show the approach could work. They are now developing some very simple sensors that will show how yeast and bacteria respond to different types of radiation sources, such as plutonium and a type of radioactive nickel. Then they need to see if the information they are gathering can be put together to tell the difference between natural radiation and weapons material.

“I was pleasantly surprised to see we’re getting very unique signatures from the couple of different radioactive isotopes we’ve tried so far,” Blenner says. “I think that has a lot of potential for being transitioned to an end user. Certainly, the findings are important for developing the feasibility of the approach.”

SPARKING NEW INDUSTRY

Blenner is now starting to experiment with a species of yeast, Cutaneotrichosporon oleaginosus, that remains largely unexplored. It has similar properties as Yarrowia lipolytica but has a set of additional capabilities, according to Blenner.

“It grows under a wider range of conditions, it grows faster, it makes more lipids,” he says. “It’s bigger, better, stronger, faster than Yarrowia lipolytica. We’ve even shown it can degrade some of nature’s toughest biopolymers — something called lignin.”

Lignin, the substance that gives trees their strength, ends up as a byproduct of wood-processing with few uses, other than burning it, Blenner says. But it could be possible to engineer Cutaneotrichosporon oleaginosus to turn lignin into omega-3 fatty acids, biofuel or biopolymers.

Blenner took leave from his Clemson duties in fall 2019 to conduct research at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. While his efforts were directed at the stars for a few months, he still had some ideas brewing for his work back in South Carolina.

Blenner says his research has the potential to catalyze a center dedicated to biomanufacturing and synthetic biology, involving a small group of faculty at Clemson already focused on the field.

“I think South Carolina is poised to transform into a microbial-industrial-biotech hub,” he says. “I think all the components are there — the right governmental policies, the workforce. We need some kind of sustained effort to build on the successes we’ve had and catalyze this new industry and industrial growth in the region.”

David Bruce, chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, says the quality he likes best about Blenner is that he is forward-thinking:

“Mark Blenner is constantly thinking about how he can do the next experiment, how he can teach his class better, what the students are going to need tomorrow and where the research in the field is going. He’s constantly trying to stay ahead of the game — and that’s impressive.”

INVESTING IN THE NEXT GENERATION

Mark Blenner oversees one of the biggest labs in Clemson’s College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences: 16 undergraduates, one master’s student, nine doctoral students and four postdoctoral researchers.

Blenner says that when he works with undergraduates, he tries to be empathetic to their needs and stresses, yet maintain high expectations: “In some places, undergraduates clean glassware in the lab, and that’s all. I want students to feel like they have a purpose and know what their work is going to contribute to the group and the scientific community.”

Blenner’s work with students is also planting the seeds for a more diverse future in chemical engineering. A team he led recruited eight Ph.D. students from groups underrepresented in engineering, including women and African Americans.

Those students are now working toward doctoral degrees in chemical engineering and plan to pursue careers in education and research, with a goal of being role models for others who follow them.

“If you develop six faculty members, you’re making six people who are going to influence about 100 students a year for the next 30 or 40 years,” Blenner says. “The initial investment creates 4,000 engineers for each faculty. You’re basically investing in better preparing the next generation of engineers and scientists.”

Jaime Idarraga-Mora passes Ph.D. Defense

Ph.D. Candidate, Jaime Idarraga-Mora, whose advisor is Dr. Scott Husson, successfully defended his dissertation titled “Mechanical Properties of Thin-Film Composite Membranes and their Role in Osmotic Processes” on March 18th.

Jaime reflected on his research and studies:  “During my Ph.D.,  I had multiple feelings, from hopelessness to joy. My joy came from constantly trying to learn new things, which led me to propose new, better-informed, hypotheses and experiments to test them. Additional excitement came when some of the hypotheses were proven true.   Osmotic processes are membrane operations in which the main driving force is a concentration difference of solutes in the solutions in contact with the two sides of a semipermeable membrane. Applications include removing water from products/contaminants, harvesting energy from salinity gradients, and lowering the costs of seawater desalination. The study system for my research was a set of thin-film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes designed for rejecting salts in desalination. These TFC RO membranes have thick supporting layers (~150 μm), which increases the diffusion pathway for salts within the membranes. This decreases the effective salinity gradient between the two surfaces of the membrane active layer, which ultimately decreases the process productivity (i.e., water flux) in osmotic processes. I aimed to provide guidelines for the improved design of TFC membranes for OP, considering the trade-off between membrane mechanical integrity and productivity.”

“Moving forward, I hope to bring the skills and critical thinking that I have gained at Clemson to develop new technologies that enable sustainable chemical processes,” said  Idarraga-Mora.    After graduation, Jaime will be joining the Dow Chemical Company as a Senior Research Specialist at their Innovation Center in Lake Jackson, TX.

ChBE Ph.D. candidate, Allison Domhoff, successfully defends her dissertation

Preparing for graduation can be tricky, especially during a nation-wide crisis.  And defending your thesis as a Ph.D. student remotely through Zoom, added another layer of concern.   However, Allison Domhoff was well-prepared and successfully presented her dissertation titled “Tuning Transport in Ionomer Nanocomposites via Nanoparticle Surface Functionalization” on April 1st.

Domhoff’s research during her studies here at Clemson investigated the effect of different surface chemistries on silica nanoparticles and incorporated the functionalized nanoparticles into ionomer membranes for vanadium redox flow batteries to correlate nanoparticle dispersion, nanocomposite morphology, and bulk ion transport through these nanocomposite membranes.

Upon graduation, Allison Domhoff will continue her career in Pittsburgh, PA as a Research Chemist for PPG Industries.   PPG Industries is a global supplier of paints, coatings, and specialty materials and a Fortune 500 company.

As Allison reflected on her journey to receiving her Ph.D., she had this to say; “I am so fortunate to have been a part of the Davis Research Group at Clemson for my PhD studies, through which I have bolstered my technical and writing skills with awesome experiences and feel ready to tackle any scientific problem that presents itself. I look forward to using my expertise on new and different projects as a Research Chemist at PPG.”

As a parting gift, Allison had a wonderful piece of advice for Ph.D. students in the Clemson Chemical Engineering program, “I recommend to all current and future students to try all new opportunities and apply to anything extra that you can, whether that be for fellowships you don’t think you have a chance in being awarded or for experiments at external facilities, you never know what will happen!”

Nicholas Gregorich wins 3MT Competition at Clemson – Finalist at CSGS

Nicholas Gregorich from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering won first place at Clemson University’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition on November 8, 2019.

3MT is a research communication competition that challenges research higher degree students to present a compelling oration on their thesis and its significance in just three minutes in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. Graduate students from all colleges at Clemson competed in preliminary rounds before all coming together for the finalist competition.

Nicholas won the PhD candidate category for his presentation, “Green Filtration for Cleaner Water.” He is advised by Dr. Eric Davis. Nick went on to represent Clemson at the March 2020 Conference of Southern Graduate Schools (CSGS) 3MT competition in Birmingham, Alabama.

Nicholas Gregorich attended the Conference for Southern Graduate Schools on March 6-7, 2020 at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Here, he represented Clemson University in the regional 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. There were 54 schools in attendance for the competition, and Nick became a finalist and placed in the top 8. This is the furthest any Clemson student has achieved in the 3MT competition.

Pictured here are Associate Dean Dr. Dominy, Ph.D. student Nick Gregorich, and Assistant Dean Dr. Dumas.

February 20, 2020 – Seminar Speaker Series – Dr. Yomaira Pagán-Torres

Yomaira Pagán-Torres is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. Dr. Pagán-Torres received her PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011, under the supervision of Prof. James A. Dumesic. During her PhD studies, Dr. Pagán-Torres conducted a research internship with Dr. Esben Taarning at Haldor Topsøe in Denmark. Before her academic position at UPR, she worked for The Dow Chemical Company as Senior Engineer in the Feedstocks, Olefins, Chemicals & Alternative Technologies Research & Development group in Freeport, Texas. Her research focuses on the design and synthesis of novel heterogeneous catalytic materials with tailored active sites for the transformation of carbon resources, such as biomass, carbon dioxide, and methane to chemicals and fuels.

She will be presenting “Hydrodeoxygenation of Biomass-Derived Alcohols and Acids over  Supported Metal-Metal Oxide Catalysts.” The abstract is as follows:

Lignocellulosic biomass, as an abundant source of renewable carbon, is a promising feedstock for the production of biobased chemicals. However, the highly complex structure and high oxygen content of biomass-derived molecules require the development of active, stable, and selective catalysts to promote selective C-O, C-H, and C-C bond cleavage. In this talk, we present catalytic strategies for deoxydehydration (DODH) and hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of carbohydrate-derived alcohols and acids to platform chemicals. In an example, we demonstrate the selective conversion of tartaric acid to succinic acid in >96% yield over heterogeneous catalyst comprised of a noble metal and an oxophilic metal. Our results suggest that the HDO of tartaric acid proceeds through two reaction pathways. One reaction pathway involves the DODH of tartaric acid to fumaric acid, followed by the hydrogenation of the C=C bond to succinic acid. Whereas, the other reaction pathway proceeds through the HDO of internal –OH groups to produce malic acid as a reaction intermediate. We also discuss the role of the noble metal, metal oxide species, and the catalyst support in the selective C-O bond cleavage of tartaric acid to succinic acid. 

February 3, 2020 – ChBE Seminar Speaker – Dr. Ashlee Ford Versypt

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering welcomes Dr. Ashlee Ford Versypt, an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Versypt’s seminar titled, “Systems Biomedicine and Pharmaceutics: Multiscale Modeling of Tissues, Treatments, & Toxicology”  will be held in 100 Earle Hall on February 6th from 2:00 to 3:00 pm.

The Systems Biomedicine and Pharmaceutics research lab at Oklahoma State University led by Dr. Ford Versypt focuses on developing and utilizing multiscale systems engineering approaches including mathematical and computational modeling to determine and understand the mechanisms governing physiological effects of various chemicals, e.g., pharmaceutical drugs, toxins, metabolites, and hormones, on human and animal tissues. We specialize in modeling the transport processes and chemical interactions related to both natural and engineered biomedical and pharmaceutical systems, particularly those that involve complex interactions between cellular populations and tissue microenvironments that lead to chronic tissue damage. We also develop and refine the computational software elements to support multiscale modeling of such systems. We draw from an interdisciplinary skillset in chemical engineering, pharmaceutics, physiology, applied mathematics, and computational science. In this seminar, vignettes of recently published work from the lab in four different lines of research will be highlighted including (1) the immune system interplay with tuberculosis granulomas, (2) metastatic cancer spread, (3) bumblebee behaviors in response to chronic exposure to pesticides, and (4) glucose-stimulated damage to kidney cells in diabetes and preventative pharmaceutical treatments. The latter area has recently been funded by an NSF CAREER award and exemplifies the integration of teaching, research, and outreach.

Dr. Ashlee N. Ford Versypt holds three degrees in chemical engineering: a B.S. from the University of Oklahoma and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During graduate school, Dr. Ford Versypt was awarded the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF) and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. In 2013, Dr. Ford Versypt was recognized as the Frederick A. Howes Scholar in Computational Science, which is awarded annually to a recent alumnus of the DOE CSGF for outstanding leadership, character, and technical achievement. In 2012-2014, Dr. Ford Versypt was a postdoctoral research associate with Richard Braatz in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Currently, Dr. Ford Versypt is an assistant professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University (OSU). She is a member of the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center and the Stephenson Cancer Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, the Interdisciplinary Toxicology Program at OSU, and the Oklahoma Center for Respiratory Infectious Diseases. She is the Chair-Elect for the American Society for Engineering Education Chemical Engineering Division. Dr. Ford Versypt is active in engaging the public in science through leading more than 60 outreach events for K-12, collegiate, and lay audiences. She has received a number of awards for her research and teaching including the NSF CAREER Award, ASEE Midwest Section Outstanding Service Award, AIChE 35 Under 35 and the OSU College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology Excellent Teacher Award. She has mentored 7 graduate students and 34 undergraduate students at OSU since 2014. Her research is currently funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology.

 

Professor Amod Ogale receives the prestigious University Research, Scholarship, and Artistic Achievement Award

Professor Amod Ogale received the prestigious University Research, Scholarship, and Artistic Achievement Award (URSAA) from President James Clements. The award recognizes Clemson University faculty whose work has been acknowledged at the highest levels nationally and internationally. URSAAA winning faculty are lifetime appointees and participate in a yearly celebration of faculty achievements.

Dr. Amod Ogale, Dow Chemical Professor of Chemical Engineering, has served on the Clemson faculty for over 33 years. He also serves as the Director of Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF). Prof. Ogale was honored with Clemson URSAA Award for being inducted as a FELLOW of three different professional societies for his life-time achievements and contributions to the American Carbon Society (ACS), Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering (SAMPE), and Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). He has also won the Graffin Lecturer Award from ACS, and the SABIC Composites Educator Award from SPE.

He has taught 12 different undergraduate and graduate courses, graduated 41 PhD and MS students, and mentored 8 post-doctoral research associates. Prof. Ogale has published over 150 refereed papers and been the principal investigator or co-investigator on over 50 research grants worth over $ 40 million.

ChBE Ph.D. Candidate, Sagar Kanhere, wins first place for poster presentation at SPE ACCE Automotive Conference 2019

Sagar Kanhere won the Best Poster Award at the Society of Plastics Engineers ACCE Automotive Composites Conference, Novi, MI, September 2019 for research entitled, “Petroleum Pitch-based Carbon Fibers With Modified Transverse Microstructure And Enhanced Properties,” co-authored by Dr. Victor Bermudez, Caroline Christopher, Dr. Sam Lukubira, and Professor Amod Ogale.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), through University of Delaware, has awarded Clemson University’s Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF) $ 2 million for carbon fiber research.

 

The project, led by Professor Ogale, is developing high-performance, cost-competitive carbon fibers for composite feedstock/manufacturing processes.

Dr. Scott Husson completes Moab Trail Marathon!

Back in November Dr. Scott Husson ran the Moab Trail Marathon! The marathon was held in Moab, Utah and is listed as a Trail Runner Magazine “Bucket List” Race.

The Moab Trail is described as unique and wild. The canyons around Moab are unlike anywhere in the world, and this course conquers some of the most spectacular. Runners travel through narrow canyons with spectacular vertical walls on both sides and along the rim-tops of deep canyons with spectacular vistas every direction. The terrain changes frequently to keep the miles clicking and includes narrow single-track, rugged jeep trails, sandy washes, ‘Moab-style slickrock’, a short section of dirt road, a few sections of no-track, a very old mining trail and a couple sections of fixed line traverse. Views will take your breath away, and include the spectacular red rocks of “Behind the Rocks Wilderness” and “Amasa Back” area, also view the sheer vertical walls of Pritchett, Hunter and Kane Creek Canyons and views into Canyonlands National Park.

Dr. Husson trained for 5 months in preparation for the marathon, mostly running trails at Paris Mountain State Park in Greenville. Even then, he described the course as really challenging. He was thankful for every rest station along the course! Dr. Husson ran the race with four friends and everyone in their group was able to finish the course. Dr. Husson says that now he’s taking things easy and thinking about what’s next!