 Marquette's a great place to be. There's such a family atmosphere here that's one of the reasons why I came back here for my graduate work. I'd like to think that I'm someone that can take my values and the leadership that I've learned at Marquette and the leadership that I'll gain this year as a Schmidt fellow on word and to my future career. You know just saying thank you doesn't really express adequately how grateful I am to the Schmidt Foundation for the opportunity that they gave me. When you graduate from Marquette University with a PhD you have that for life and nobody can take that away from you and the Schmidt Fellowship allowed me to achieve that so that was a very important factor in my life. Marquette does the best that it can but it's definitely very helpful that there are foundations like the Schmidt to help graduate students with pursue their dreams. Without that Schmidt Fellowship I probably wouldn't have the degree. Once that Schmidt Fellowship was awarded I had a full year to focus on what I was doing and that was a singly the most beneficial thing that that I received during my graduate study. Thanks for helping with my degree. Without it I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be the the chair of the Department of Civil Construction and Environmental Engineering at Marquette. I wouldn't be carrying on that I guess you would say the leadership and educational role that I started as a PhD student and then continue today with both our undergraduate and graduate students. It impacted my life as I then felt that I can't take a leading role after after graduation by establishing my own nonprofit organization. It is very instrumental and I think without it I I would have unable to finish my research on time and submit my dissertation so thank you so much. This fellowship has had an immense impact on my my career and for that I'm forever grateful and I will continue to do my best to live up to the mission of the foundation by by pursuing excellence in teaching and in research. The foundation has done a lot for Marquette. It hasn't just given the students you know the the help they need to finish their education and go out and and have wonderful jobs but at least in three instances in our department has come full circle and we've returned to Marquette. One of the things that I think about it's not only the research that I've done that's helped people but you know the fact that I was able to study for my doctorate and the fact that I can teach some of these concepts in biomaterials means that there are future generations of engineers, scientists and dentists that are going to use the same sort of technology to help other people. So I see it sort of as an exponential thing it's not just what I've done it's what others who have come after me have done. The gift was inestimable in everyone's imagination because 50 years it kept coming and supported graduate students that probably could not otherwise have completed their dissertations.