Middle schoolers don’t usually spend their summer afternoons cracking secret codes. But inside a computer lab in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, groups of tweenagers gathered one day in May racing through password-cracking puzzles, deciphering secret messages and learning how hackers think. The exercises were part of Desert CodeSprouts, an annual computer science workshop for middle school students hosted by Fulton Schools faculty members. The one-day camp introduces students to cybersecurity, robotics, artificial intelligence, or AI, and privacy through hands-on challenges designed to feel more like games than lectures. For Ozgur Ozmen, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of computer science and engineering, the cybersecurity module wasn’t simply about entertaining students for an afternoon. It was about planting an idea. “If we can teach kids about security early on, then in the future they’ll design technology with security in mind instead of treating it as an afterthought,” Ozmen says. “Hopefully, the next generation will build systems with fewer and fewer security problems.” That approach reflects a recurring theme throughout Ozmen’s early career. He sees mentorship as a continuum, helping students discover cybersecurity in middle school, develop as researchers in college and eventually become mentors themselves. The sooner, the better Cybersecurity often suffers from a familiar problem. Products are designed to be fast, inexpensive and convenient. Security comes later, patched onto systems after vulnerabilities emerge. Ozmen believes education follows a similar pattern. Too often, students discover cybersecurity only after they’ve already chosen a technical specialty. By then, many of the habits and assumptions behind system design are already established. Desert CodeSprouts offers a different approach. This year’s workshop introduced middle school students to cybersecurity through Caesar ciphers, password-cracking exercises and interactive challenges hosted on the pwn.college cybersecurity