STEM student is engineering a bright future

When he was deciding which college to attend, Brett Larsen of Chandler had to make a choice between two in-state schools.

"ASU and U of A recruited me pretty heavily because I was a National Merit Scholar,” Larsen said. “Each provided very good offers. I chose ASU because of Barrett.

“Barrett is like being part of a smaller, close-knit group of scholars in the middle of a big research university.”

That intimacy helped Larsen achieve big things in his schoolwork and extracurricular activities at ASU.

Larsen will graduate this May with a double major (electrical engineering and physics). He has conducted several research projects while working at ASU’s Flexible Electronics and Display Center since freshman year. His current project involves flexible arrays that can be used to detect and disarm explosive devices. Larsen also has worked at the particle collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

As a STEM student at a large university, Larsen found invaluable help in the engineering peer-mentor program, the E2 Camp and the school’s emphasis on treating its students as engineers from day one. He has given back to these programs by acting as a mentor as well.

But his hunch about Barrett, The Honors College paid off handsomely, allowing him to make connections with other engineering honors students and with students from across the university.

“I enjoyed living in that community,” he said. “It had a big impact on getting me involved on campus.”

Now that he is graduating, Larsen is looking to spread his wings a little and move to California. He will be attending Stanford in the fall, working on his doctorate in computational physics.