Ethan Chang

“I’ve always been fascinated by how hardware and software work together to solve complex problems,” Ethan Chang says. “Computer systems engineering offers endless opportunities to innovate and create technology that improves people’s lives.”

This spring, Chang is earning a computer systems engineering degree from the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. As a participant in the Fulton Schools Grand Challenges Scholars Program, or GCSP, he has been immersed in a rigorous curriculum aimed at equipping future engineers to tackle society’s most pressing challenges, as outlined by the National Academy of Engineering.

As part of GCSP, Chang participated in the Engineering Projects in Community Service program, or EPICS. In the program, students help solve engineering-based problems for charities, schools and other not-for-profit organizations.

Chang joined a student team helping to develop an autonomous, real-time event attendance system to assist fire marshals at ASU in ensuring safety at events. For the project, he refined the computer vision model that sensors used to detect the presence of nearby people. The work was designed to help fire marshals get an accurate headcount of people in a given area.

He also engaged in both self-led research and projects in the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative. He is especially proud of his contributions to a zero trust architecture implementation for embedded systems, which is a “never trust, always verify” approach used by cybersecurity experts to ensure all computer equipment connected to a system has been authenticated. As an increasing number of products have computing devices embedded in them, such work is of growing importance.

Outside of Fulton Schools, Chang stayed busy. As an honors student in Barrett, The Honors College at ASU, he served as a peer mentor and worked as a housing community assistant. He was a section leader for ASU 101 The ASU Experience, a required class designed to set new students up for success.

Next year, Chang will continue on in the Fulton Schools as a student in the Accelerated Master’s program. He hopes to contribute to the advancement of secure and resilient embedded systems.

During his time in the Fulton Schools, Chang says that he has learned the value of teamwork.

“The collaborative spirit of the Fulton Schools is something I will always carry with me,” he says. “Working with peers from diverse backgrounds taught me the value of teamwork and different perspectives.”

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ spring 2025 class here.