Shuo Chen was one of seven employees at The MITRE Corporation who received awards during the 2017 Women of Color STEM Conference. The women were recognized for outstanding contributions to the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and their commitment to encouraging young women to pursue STEM careers.
Chen, who is applying advanced speech recognition techniques to solve aviation problems, was presented with an award for technical innovation. This award recognizes a woman who invents a product, device, or process and serves as a stereotype-breaking role model for women in technology.
Since joining MITRE, Chen has made significant improvements to the air traffic control domain. She has applied a range of skills to advance research and develop solutions to air traffic control domain issues.
Most notably, she developed speech recognition technology to process voice communication between controllers and pilots. This was a major step in the improvement of air traffic safety.
One of her earlier accomplishments was the creation of a bilingual training system. The system used speech recognition and text-to-speech to train controllers in a simulation environment.
To design and develop the Spanish components, Chen and worked with controllers to understand their accents and phraseology. The resulting dual language system is in use today in Buenos Aires.
When not working on engineering projects, Chen volunteers with a not-for-profit dance company as a teacher, sound engineer, stage manager, and technical director.
"On behalf of MITRE, I am proud to recognize these seven amazing MITRE women who have made outstanding contributions in the STEM field," said Julie Gravallese, vice president and chief human resources officer at MITRE. "It is an honor to have so many of our employees recognized. Their technical and workplace achievements have a direct and positive impact on the work we do with our government sponsors, and their dedication to developing the next generation of STEM professionals is inspiring."