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HONORING MIMI AUNG AS A 28TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT WOMAN OF THE YEAR
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HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF
of california
in the house of representatives
Monday, July 26, 2021
Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Speaker, I rise today in honor of Women's History Month. Each year, we pay special tribute to the contributions and sacrifices made by our nation's women. It is an honor to pay homage to outstanding women who are making a difference in my Congressional District. I would like to recognize a remarkable woman, MiMi Aung of La Canada Flintridge, California, who is receiving Special Districtwide Recognition for her trailblazing work on the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.
MiMi credits her mother, who was the first Burmese woman to earn a doctoral degree in mathematics from an American university as her inspiration. MiMi's family returned to Myanmar when she was a toddler, where MiMi resided until she moved back to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue her education. She obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and her Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, with her thesis focus on signal processing and communications, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In 1990, Ms. Aung moved to Southern California and began working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), fulfilling her childhood dream of space exploration. She began her career by working on mathematical algorithms for deep space communication with spacecraft hundreds of millions of miles away from Earth, and during her 30 year career at JPL, was selected for various positions with increasing degrees of responsibility specifically in Deep Space Network projects, organizational line management, technology development, and space flight projects. The numerous technical areas she engaged in included spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control; autonomous systems; deep space signal processing and communications; optical communications and multiple-spacecraft formation flying.
With Ms. Aung as the Project Manager, worldwide history was made on April 19, 2021, when the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took its first flight and was the first powered, controlled flight in the planet Mars' atmosphere, and the first such flight anywhere outside of Earth.
Believing that young people should pursue what they believe in, and that critical thinking and industriousness play a big role in pursuit of their heart-felt objectives, MiMi is a frequent keynote speaker at various Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) summits and conferences and local area schools.
MiMi and her husband, Dr. James Shell and their two children live in La Canada Flintridge. Madam Speaker, for her extraordinary achievements in the science realm, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring this exceptional, well-respected woman of California's 28th Congressional District, MiMi Aung.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 130
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