Trinidad and Tobago: Aerospace Eng. Camille Wardrop Alleyne named as WCW for UN Space Day

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago: The National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago has recently declared that Trinbagonian aerospace engineer and science ambassador Dr Camille Wardrop Alleyne is the WCW in honour of United Nations (UN) International Day of Human Space Flight!

As per the updates, the platform shared her extraordinary and inspiring journey with the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Alleyne was born in Port of Spain in 1966 and became a scientist in NASA’s Space Program. She holds the position of Associate Program Scientist for the International Space Station (ISS) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

As a child, she attended St. Francois Girls’ College in Belmont, where she excelled in analytical subjects, such as Mathematics & the sciences.

Following this, she moved to the U.S. to pursue her tertiary education in mechanical engineering, after which NASA recruited her to work as an engineer at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Dr Alleyne was an essential part of the teams that worked on both NASA’s Constellation program and the Orion project, after which she was appointed to the International Space Station (ISS) Program in Texas, which is currently NASA’s only human space-flight programme.

Furthermore, it is also said that her roles also include ensuring transparency via communicating the ISS’s accomplishments with the public, NASA, the U.S. Congress, as well as with the scientific and educational communities.

In her remarks, she considers the presence of women – especially women of colour – vital to the growth of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). 

Moreover, to achieve this, she founded The Brightest Stars Foundation to inspire young women to become future leaders in STEM, one of whom was Dr Alexandra Amon, a world-leading Trinbagonian astrophysicist who works at Princeton University.

It is noteworthy that Dr Alleyne has been commended by NASA for her outstanding leadership and has been awarded on numerous occasions, including the Outstanding Woman in Aerospace Award by the National Society of Black Engineers. In 2011, NIHERST named her an icon in Caribbean Science and Technology.

Notably, the shared photograph showing Dr Camille Wardrop Alleyne is courtesy of the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday Newspaper, Feb 11th 2021. This newspaper is part of the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago Newspaper Collection.