Olga Aparicio (1958 – 2023)
Olga Aparicio was born in 1958, in San Miguel, El Salvador to Berta Marina Quiteño and Leonidas Aparicio. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de El Salvador in 1984, where she graduated at the top of her class and as the sole female graduate of the program for that year.
Olga immigrated to the United States in 1985, where her passion thrived in advancing knowledge and understanding of telecommunications and other emerging technologies. She started her professional career as an engineer at Texas Instruments in El Salvador. Subsequently, when she moved to Virginia she joined the NEC Corporation of America and Cable & Wireless PLC. She then joined Noblis Inc in 2003 and spent the rest of her career there, until early 2022.
Throughout her career Olga was a trailblazer for innovation in the telecommunications industry. During her tenure at NEC and Cable and Wireless, Olga was a key contributor to the standardization of optical transport networking technologies in the early growth of fiber telecommunications services. She participated in standardization efforts at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and co-authored Internet Draft documents on Optical Carrier Services Framework. Olga’s business travels took her to Japan and throughout Europe, presenting her work at Telecommunications conferences.
At Noblis, Olga was a Solutions Architect as well as a Principal Investigator in Network Virtualization Technologies. She provided thought leadership to numerous technical projects at Noblis as an advisor, contributor and leader. She recognized early the advantages of decoupling network controls from hardware and allowing the network to be managed by a much more flexible software layer. Olga initiated a Noblis testbed to assess Software Defined Networking (SDN)/Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)/Software Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN) and associated applications for Government and Enterprise use cases. More recently, her research interests extended to include wireless telecommunications in conjunction with SDN and NFV. Olga demonstrated expertise and leadership in interfacing with development teams and government and enterprise clients. She disseminated the results of her team work as broadly as possible with white papers and technical analysis to benefit both government clients and the public good.
As all of Olga’s career roles and responsibilities over the years have helped to expand and shape the telecommunications Industry, her humanitarian contributions should not be ignored. She disseminated enthusiasm and wise counsel to her teams and clients. The proudest trait she espoused was to share her knowledge and mentor many other engineers at multiple levels across Noblis, and also technical experts in other fields including data analytics. Olga was a member of the Society of Women Engineers at various points in her career, and participated in SWE conferences. She was also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the Enterprise Advisory Council (EAC) at MEF, an association focusing on digital transformation.
Olga had a great love for her family (including sisters, brother, several cousins, nieces, and nephews) and friends, with whom she enjoyed spending time celebrating their success and achievements. She loved traveling and enjoyed going to the movies with family and friends. She was an avid reader and known for her quick wit, her infectious smile, and her kind and compassionate spirit.
Number Available: 3
Class: Freshmen
Major: Computer Engineering, Computer Engineering Technology, Computer Science, Computing, Data Science, Cybersecurity, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technology, Electromechanical Engineering Technology, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering
Amount: $1,000
Additional Information: Preference given to candidates demonstrating financial need, under-represented groups, veterans, candidates with disabilities, reentry/nontraditional candidates and/or community college students. Candidates must attend George Mason University, The George Washington University, University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Columbia University in the City of New York, or Virginia Commonwealth University. Minimum GPA: 3.5. US Citizenship required.
