Lillian Seebold

Lillian Seebold still recalls the night everything clicked.

“I remember one night staying up late in the Brickyard building, working on finishing a system for the graduate cloud computing class I was taking,” she says. “Although I spent almost a full day debugging, brainstorming and coding, it was bittersweet when I finally got the project working because that meant there were no more problems to solve.”

That moment revealed something deeper. Seebold isn’t motivated by finishing a problem, but by the challenge of finding the next one.

This spring, Seebold graduates from the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, with a degree in computer systems engineering and honors distinction. Named an Outstanding Graduate, she has built an impressive portfolio spanning research, industry and leadership.

Her technical experience stretches across high-impact industries. As an intern at General Dynamics, she helped develop a secure communication system for military radios, building a custom peer-to-peer interface that was integrated into deployed devices. At Medtronic, she built a full-stack application to protect sensitive data in medical device manufacturing, a project strong enough to be adopted for permanent use.

Alongside her internships, Seebold conducted research in ASU’s Virtualized Infrastructure, Systems, and Applications Lab, under the mentorship of Associate Professor Ming Zhao, optimizing storage systems to support large-scale artificial intelligence applications. Supported by funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, her work focused on improving performance and durability in next-generation memory systems.

Her impact goes beyond technical work. Through the Society of Women Engineers, or SWE, Seebold rose from committee member to president, leading a community of hundreds of students. She secured more than $30,000 in sponsorships from 22 sponsors, which funded the attendance of 24 students to the SWE national conference.

Mentorship and community have been central to her journey, shaping both her leadership style and her commitment to making engineering more accessible.

After graduation, Seebold will spend the summer traveling across Asia and Europe. Then, she will join an engineering leadership rotational program in Boston, gaining experience across multiple disciplines while accelerating her path in industry. Wherever she goes next, she’ll keep searching for the next problem worth solving.

“Engineering is one of the most versatile fields,” she says. “If you love building, expressing your creativity through products that make an impact, and challenging yourself, then engineering is for you.”

Favorites

Hobby: Cooking
Band: Magdalena Bay
TV show: Adventure Time
Book: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Game: Animal Crossing

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ spring 2026 class.

Written by Kelly deVos