The Voice Recorder Built for PhD Research
Don't risk losing months of fieldwork. CHELA is the secure, AI-powered voice recorder designed for academic rigour. Instantly transcribe participant interviews, dictate your thesis ideas on the go, and semantically search your entire research audio library.
Turn Talk into TasksStop losing brilliant ideas.
Never miss a citation or a breakthrough idea. Chela organizes hours of research audio and
lectures into a searchable knowledge base, perfect for your thesis or dissertation.
Why Chela? Because generic tools miss the nuance. We specialize in
Research Assistant.
Research & Study Logs
Synthesize origins of behavioral econ...
"The subject described a feeling of cognitive dissonance when asked about..."
Control group showed a 14% deviation...
Total Recall for Your Work Life.
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1
"What did the client say about the budget?"
Search for "client name" or "budget" three weeks later and find the exact audio clip.
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2
Turn rambling into reports.
Chela structures your unstructured thoughts into clear, readable notes and action items.
One recorder, four PhD workflows
Fieldwork & research interviews
Record participant interviews on your phone and get speaker-separated transcripts you can code in NVivo, Atlas.ti, or plain Markdown. Entity extraction pulls out names, places, and dates, and every recording stays encrypted — which makes your ethics-board data-handling section easier to write, not harder.
Supervision meetings
The meeting where your supervisor casually redefines your methodology deserves a transcript. Capture it, get the action items, and search "what did she say about chapter three?" the night before your next meeting.
Literature thoughts & the shower-idea problem
The connection between two papers arrives on your walk home. Dictate it; CHELA files it with the entities it mentions, so when you write the literature review, six months of scattered thoughts are one semantic search away.
Conference notes & lectures
Record talks (with permission), keynotes, and your own post-session debriefs. The corridor conversation after the panel is usually the part worth keeping — and the part every other note system loses.
Transcribing dissertation interviews specifically? See our guide to transcribing dissertation interviews automatically, or the academic interview transcription workflow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it secure enough for IRB data storage requirements?
Yes. We offer strict data siloing, end-to-end encryption features, and do not use your participant audio to train our foundational models, aligning with standard university IRB protocols.
Can I upload audio from my dedicated Sony or Zoom recorder?
Absolutely. While you can record directly via our mobile app, you can also securely bulk-upload MP3 or WAV files from external field recorders via our web dashboard.
How accurate is the transcription for technical or academic jargon?
Our models are highly advanced and excel at capturing complex academic terminology, theories, and field-specific jargon better than standard consumer dictation tools.
Can I export the transcripts to my reference manager?
Yes, transcripts can be exported as structured Markdown, PDF, or Plain Text, making them easy to import into Zotero, Mendeley, or Obsidian.
Work smarter, not harder.
Transform your voice into your most powerful productivity tool.
Get Chela for Free