Dawn Szelc

Dawn Szelc (pronounced “Sheltz”) has been with The MITRE Corporation for 25 years and is a Lead Communications Engineer. She is currently part of the Border Security Department of the Center for Securing the Homeland but has worked in various parts of MITRE with many different government customers. MITRE stood up the original organization which has become the Wireless Innovation Forum in 1996 as part of an innovative idea of Wayne Bonser, the PM for AFRL’s SPEAKeasy program, to develop interface standards for US government software radio in collaboration with industry. Dawn chaired several the Working Groups in the first 10 years of its inception. She assisted with establishing the Software Communications Architecture (SCA) as part of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) project in support of the JTRS Joint Program Office (JPO). Dawn has provided engineering support to numerous different software radio projects for multiple government customers, and she is currently supporting the DISA Defense Spectrum Organization on the CBRS spectrum sharing program as an RF Subject Matter Expert (SME). She has worked as a Radar/Sensor SME for DHS S&T and DHS CBP for RF, ground, and maritime surveillance, and Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) for ground surveillance. Earlier Dawn lead a team working on proof-of-concept demonstrations and risk mitigation efforts for cutting-edge COTS embedded and C3I systems for strategic, theater, and tactical environments.

Before coming to MITRE, Dawn worked 9 years at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) in Ann Arbor, MI as a research engineer designing and developing proof-of-concept Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems and embedded design projects.

Dawn has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MS in Electrical Engineering also from the University of Michigan with concentrations in Communications and Electromagnetics. Dawn was awarded a patent July 2011. She is a 37-year member of IEEE.