IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2014 - 36

and more. "My company predominately
looks at building acoustics," describes
Schnitta. "We do engineering of floors
and walls so that sound does not transmit
through them. We also engineer mechanical rooms so that the low frequency
doesn't couple into the structure and
room design to help people hear better in
rooms and lessen the noise in the room."
A wide-ranging portfolio of the company's work can be found on the SoundSense Web site, though recent examples
that Schnitta shared include a study of
underwater acoustics to determine the
impact that the construction of bridges
has on nearby underwater wildlife and
a paper on the proper acoustic environment for pediatric trauma rooms to
optimize speech intelligibility. "I have a
patent on a washable tube that absorbs
different frequencies based on tube size,"
says Schnitta. "The paper looks at the
improvement in speech intelligibility
when you add the proper absorbers. This
allows medical professionals to communicate better in a trauma room. Absorbers also reduce noise in a room, which
relates to speeding up recovery time in
hospitals."
Despite zeroing in on her passion for
a particular field, Schnitta's career path
toward this entrepreneurial endeavor
was quite winding. She loved math
from a young age, crediting her father,
a mathematician and engineer, with

What
Schnitta loves
most centers around
the "paradise effect" or
"quietude," described as the
elimination of noise and
the optimization
of sounds that one
likes.

IEEE womEn In EngInEErIng magazInE

University of Miami. "I gained a growing
knowledge base of what is a signal versus
what is noise and how to detect the differences and model them," she explains.
While going for her Ph.D., Schnitta
worked for a company doing classified
government work around underwater
acoustics, geophysical signal processing,
radar, and sonar signals.

Starting Anew
inspiring her aptitude. However, she
When, in 1981, her first child was born,
points out, "I also give a lot of credit to
Schnitta decided it would be too difmy mother, who encouraged my love of
ficult to keep up with the demands of
math because it wasn't until I started
classified government work and spend
college that I realized most girls choose
as much time with her child as she
other fields." In fact, Schnitta distinctly
wanted to, so she struck out on her
remembers the moment she
understood this: on the first
day of her freshman year of
college, she was running late
to an advanced calculus class
and stumbled into the lecture
hall to find it filled with about
300 people, all men. Regardless, it was the professor of
that class who first showed
Schnitta the video of the
bridge collapse and set her
on a path toward a career in
applied mathematics.
After graduating with a
degree in mathematics from
Purdue University in 1973,
Schnitta took a job with General Electric where mathematicians were being re-trained
as marine engineers. Two years Schnitta chaired a special session at the 2013
Acoustical Society of America meeting in
later, she returned to school Montreal.
and earned a master's degree
in mechanical engineering from Tufts
own. "People were always asking me if
University. "At Tufts, I took a vibration
I could solve their sound problems, so
course, and it was during that class that
I knew there was a need for acoustical
it all came full circle and I realized vibraengineering," she says. "Friends would
tions were the subject that had tweaked
complain that a new air conditioning
my inner soul when seeing the video about
unit was driving them crazy, or that
the bridge collapse in calculus class," says
they had just purchased a great stereo
Schnitta. "I knew that was the direction I
system but it didn't sound right in their
wanted to go."
homes." The problems varied but all fell
Schnitta next moved to Florida to earn
under signal processing, and so Soundher Ph.D. in signal processing from the
Sense was born.

DeCeMBeR 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2014