SoarTech’s Veteran Transition Assistance AI Capability Earns Spot as DARPA Success Story

SoarTech’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 award to explore the application of eXplainable AI (XAI) technology, is now highlighted as a success story on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) website.

Funded by DARPA’s SBIR program, Explainable AI to support Veterans Transition Assistance Programs (XAI-VTAP), is SoarTech’s capability to help veterans entering the civilian workforce.

Using artificial intelligence, XAI-VTAP enables veterans, job placement organizations, and human resource managers to make informed decisions about a veteran’s post-military employment, identify potential career trajectories, and determine any skill gaps that they have for achieving opportunities.

“SoarTech has vast experience in modeling human reasoning and enhancing human performance with artificial intelligence,” said Michael van Lent, Ph.D., SoarTech CEO and president. ”XAI-VTAP is a great example of AI that meets both of these objectives while addressing a major challenge for our military warfighters and veterans.”

The original goal of the SBIR was to explore the application of emerging eXplainable AI (XAI) technology toward assisting veterans as they venture into the commercial job market.

SoarTech researched and developed XAI-VTAP technology that allows veterans and civilian hiring managers to:

• Better understand how military experience can fulfill commercial job requirements.
• Leverage XAI technology to decompose how machine learning algorithms read and interpret their resumes.
• Explore and plan career pathways based on historical resume data to provide a better understanding of the long-term opportunity impact of career decisions.
• Receive tailored recommendations based on knowledge, skills, and ability fit.

SoarTech has received follow-on funding from the Army Research Institute (ARI) for prototyping integration within the U.S. Army’s Talent Management new, decentralized, market-style hiring system. XAI-VTAP will enable officers and command units to automatically decompose resumes and job listings into easy-to-understand knowledge, skill, and abilities that will enhance the quality of officer-opportunity matches within the Army’s talent pipeline.

“We’re extremely honored to know that DARPA is highlighting our project as one of their success stories,” said van Lent. “But even more, we’re thrilled to use our talents in developing and applying artificial intelligence to make the lives of transitioning veterans easier.”