“Harvesting switchgrass was definitely a different experience from what I normally do,” said Valerie Garcia-Negrón. “It made me realize how exciting and important it is to be in the field doing hands-on activities. Working with switchgrass helped our group obtain a holistic view of the project’s processing phases: harvesting plants, extracting lignin, converting lignin into carbon products, and modeling the carbon samples at the atomic- and meso-scales.”