As we celebrate AAPI Heritage Month, it's important to recognize the achievements of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
Women of Color magazine is dedicated to celebrating these individuals, especially those who have made significant contributions to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.
The Women of Color STEM Conference was created to empower women in STEM careers and make the accomplishments of exceptional women visible to all attendees.
Dr. Ning Yu is the Chief Natural Language Processing Scientist at Leidos.
She received the Women of Color Outstanding Technical Contribution Award for her exceptional contribution to the technology field.
One of her notable achievements was leading a project to enhance the processing of veterans' benefit applications.
This project developed a triage model that achieved an accuracy level of over 95 percent and received the prestigious Leidos 2022 Information Technology Innovation Award.
Dr. Yu is also a prolific author with over 30 peer-reviewed publications in information retrieval and natural language processing.
During the Women of Color in STEM gala, Dr. Yu delivered an acceptance speech sharing her journey and experiences.
She mentioned that as a little girl, she always enjoyed math and fixing things, and her parents encouraged her pursuit of STEM.
She recalled her parents taking the risk of giving a watch to a seven-year-old to fix, knowing that they might never see it again.
She also spoke about spending weekends at the back of her dad's bicycle, traveling almost an hour back and forth to attend advanced math classes for about three years in elementary school.
Dr. Yu mentioned that in her years of working in academia and industry, she found herself happiest, most productive, and most creative when she worked with a diverse and inclusive group of people.
She acknowledged that Leidos provides an environment that enables other women at Leidos, and the audience to make a real-world impact.
Dr. Yu concluded her speech by thanking her family, friends, and colleagues for their love and support, emphasizing that no one can succeed alone. If you're interested, you can listen to the entire speech at the approximately 2:03:32 mark.
