Ten­nille Al­leyne

Have you ever dreamed of ex­plor­ing be­yond plan­et Earth? Have you ever thought about what life would be like in space, or on oth­er plan­ets such as Sat­urn or Mars? Well, Camille Al­leyne's 16 year long ca­reer has kept her clos­er to the skies and more than many of us would ever hope to see.The 45 year old PhD As­sis­tant Pro­gram Sci­en­tist for the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion and part time stu­dent works with the Na­tion­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NASA) with the hopes of one day be­com­ing an as­tro­naut. Now based in Hous­ton Texas, the moth­er of one has an im­pres­sive re­sume of aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ments that have af­ford­ed her many op­por­tu­ni­ties to work with the most bril­liant per­son­nel in the Unit­ed States in the field of Aero­nau­tics.

Born and raised in Trinidad, Al­leyne ad­mit­ted that she trav­elled a lot as a child with her dad who worked at Shell and a moth­er who was a nurse and "just dreamt a lot about space" when she was younger."It was an in­nate cu­rios­i­ty I had. But trav­el­ling as a child fed my love for planes," she said. In 1983, the St. Fran­cois Girls Col­lege alum­na left her home­land to pur­sue Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing with a fo­cus on Aero­space at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty."That was the first time I knew about NASA and the space shut­tle. It just changed the tra­jec­to­ry of my life, who I want­ed to work for and what I want­ed to be­come."Af­ter com­plet­ing her un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree, her hopes of join­ing the ranks at NASA were de­layed, so she de­cid­ed to pur­sue a Mas­ters at Flori­da A&M State Uni­ver­si­ty in Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing with a spe­cial­i­sa­tion in com­pos­ite ma­te­ri­als. She was one of two per­sons from her pro­gram who were re­cruit­ed to work at the Kennedy Space Cen­tre (the launch com­plex) as a flight sys­tems en­gi­neer."It was ex­hil­a­rat­ing be­cause I got to work on the space shut­tle and I was able to see the hard­ware up close," she re­called.

Af­ter a two and a half year stint at the Space Cen­tre, Al­leyne de­cid­ed to re­turn to school to pur­sue her Mas­ters in Aero­space En­gi­neer­ing with a spe­cial­iza­tion in Hy­per­son­ic Aero­dy­nam­ics and Propul­sion. "I want­ed to be an as­tro­naut and I am very dri­ven, so I kept push­ing my­self. Not on­ly did I want to learn the flight sys­tems and pay­heads (car­go trans­port­ed to and from space) but I al­so want­ed to de­sign the space­craft," she said.Af­ter com­plet­ing her de­gree, Al­leyne wait­ed two years be­fore be­ing re­cruit­ed by the De­part­ment of De­fense to work on bal­lis­tic mis­sile de­fense sys­tems as an Aero­space Sys­tems En­gi­neer for eight years by an­oth­er com­pa­ny. Soon, NASA came call­ing once again with an in­vi­ta­tion to ap­ply to their As­tro­naut Pro­gram in 2003. Out of 4000 ap­pli­cants to the elite pro­gram, Al­leyne was se­lect­ed as part of the fi­nal twelve where she un­der­went a week long in­ter­view, med­ical test­ing and eval­u­a­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, she did not make it to the fi­nal round; how­ev­er, the process on­ly so­lid­i­fied her pas­sion for work­ing at NASA. "That ex­pe­ri­ence ac­tu­al­ly made me re­al­ize that NASA was where I need­ed to be. NASA was my home," she stat­ed.

Short­ly af­ter, Al­leyne's luck turned around when she was hired by NASA to work as a Sys­tems En­gi­neer. A serendip­i­tous en­counter with the Ex­plo­ration Di­rec­tor opened up a once-in-a-life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty to work in the field of space ex­plo­ration. She was re­cruit­ed to work at the John­son Space Cen­tre as a Crew and Ser­vice Mod­ule Sys­tems En­gi­neer and Test Man­ag­er for the Ori­on Space Ve­hi­cle. While there, Al­leyne am­bi­tious­ly lead her team in de­vel­op­ing re­quire­ments and test­ing plans for the crew and ser­vice mod­ule for six years."We have a ground test pro­gram that sim­u­lates the en­vi­ron­ment that the space­craft is go­ing to see, from launch to re-en­try," she ex­plained.She has since moved on to her cur­rent po­si­tion as As­sis­tant Pro­gram Sci­en­tist for the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion."Every day there is some­thing new to learn and it's just fan­tas­tic. We get a new sense of knowl­edge be­cause we're do­ing it in a space en­vi­ron­ment," she said.Al­though Al­leyne's pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits have been im­mense­ly re­ward­ing, she al­so has phil­an­thropic in­ter­ests of ed­u­cat­ing young girls through the medi­um of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy to reach their own po­ten­tial."I had this vi­sion that I want­ed to use the dis­cov­er­ies in space to bring peace on earth... I want­ed to bring all na­tions, es­pe­cial­ly na­tions of colour – Africa, the Caribbean and South Amer­i­ca in the di­a­logue of space," she said.

As such, Al­leyne de­cid­ed to chan­nel her dreams through the es­tab­lish­ment of her Bright­est Star Foun­da­tion in 2007. "The aim is to ed­u­cate, em­pow­er and in­spire young women around the world to be lead­ers through the sci­ence of math, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. I would like to es­tab­lish a glob­al net­work of Space and Sci­ence Acad­e­my for Girls, start­ing in Kenya (where 30 per­cent of young girls do not have ac­cess to sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion) and Trinidad. I want to pro­duce the next gen­er­a­tion of No­bel Lau­re­ates in Sci­ence," she said proud­ly. Her dri­ve to help change the world through sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy has led her to pur­sue her PhD in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Lead­er­ship, which she jug­gles with her oth­er do­mes­tic and pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments.It is clear that Camille Al­leyne is noth­ing short of a trail­blaz­er in the field of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy. Her am­bi­tion and tal­ent has pro­pelled her to heights that have su­per­seded the en­vi­ron­ment in which she works. What makes her great lies far be­yond her dis­cov­er­ies in out­er space. It re­sides with­in her re­lent­less pur­suit to leave a lega­cy through her phil­an­thropic ef­forts of mould­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of young sci­en­tists, who would one day soar to the moon and be­yond!