Chieh Chien Chang arrived in Pasadena in 1940 to study under Theodore von Karman at the California Institution of Technology. Between 1942 and 1946, he worked as an engineer at the Glenn Martin Aircraft Company (which later became part of the aircraft giant Lockheed-Martin Corporation). After that, he decided to pursue a doctorate under the supervision of von Karman and Qian Xuesen, then an associate professor at Caltech. He had met with von Karman and Qian during his years at Tsinghua. According to the account of Qian’s biographer Iris Chang, Dr. Chang’s scholarship was originally offered by von Karman in 1937.