Owen Chen worked on the Ithaca Recovery project, focusing on backend maintenance by deprecating and removing a legacy API route for meeting details in the cornellh4i/ithaca-recovery repository. Using JavaScript and TypeScript within a Next.js framework, Owen eliminated obsolete code to streamline the API surface, aligning it with newer implementations and reducing technical debt. This targeted cleanup did not introduce new features but improved codebase clarity and maintainability, making future onboarding and refactoring more straightforward. The work demonstrated a methodical approach to backend development, prioritizing long-term maintainability and developer experience over immediate feature delivery during the project period.