Celebrating the Achievements of Women in Engineering: WUSAT Satellite Engineering
‘WUSAT Women’ supports ‘Women-Space’!
Dr Bill Crofts – Director of the WUSAT Programme
There is a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that is headed: ‘Men, Stop Calling Yourself Allies. Act Like One”. I am not sure if I have ever called myself an ally for gender equity in any formal way. But, on reflection, I can sign up to the description offered by another HBR article that details how women can identify male allies in the workplace. That is, how male allies recognise and understand the importance of fostering an inclusive, welcoming and equitable workplace.
And this is why I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate the achievements of some of the excellent women engineers who have worked with the WUSAT Satellite Engineering Team since 2006. WUSAT is based at the University of Warwick and is a relatively unique feature within the world of Higher Education and the application of multi-disciplinary engineering to the development of satellite technology.
The WUSAT 2023-24 Team
A typical WUSAT Team
A typical WUSAT team (2023-24 team shown above) is a multi-disciplinary mix of Mechanical, Manufacturing, Electrical/Electronic, Software, and particularly Systems Engineers. Our need to work in a highly integrated manner and to follow a rigorous Space Systems Engineering approach means that – to be honest – we don’t think about inclusivity, gender diversity, ethnic diversity, etc – we just are! Inclusivity within our teams and with all the external partners and organisations we work with is how we operate and how we have succeeded.
WUSAT has been in operation since 2005 when it was suggested to me by a European Space Agency project manager that I might form such a team to develop the electrical power supply subsystem for an ESA Moon orbiting satellite (ESMO). This was being developed by 21 European University teams under ESA’s guidance. From that high-level experience we have developed into a ‘mini Space Agency’ where our student engineers design, develop, test and launch a CubeSat satellite to meet the requirements of a client payload for Low-Earth Orbit test/demonstration purposes. Most of these missions have involved extensive collaborations, not least with the European Space Agency, so all our student engineers (predominantly 4th Yr MEng) get an enormous experience before they begin their post-grad careers.
WUSAT-2 – Sweden Space Centre (2015) – Integration to launch vehicle (left) and launch (above).
Our mission heritage to date
Women in WUSAT
A key feature of our WUSAT teams has been the percentage of our engineers that have been women, the roles that many of them undertake, the quality of their technical contribution, the importance of their presence to enhanced team cohesion and integration, and the impressive range of careers that they progress onto.
We make no effort to recruit women engineers, the correct mix of engineering disciplines for a given phase of work is what matters to us, so everyone is there on merit. However, I’m pleased to say that most of our team photos over the past 18 years look like the 2023-24 photo shown above! I’m also not going to deny that, in my experience, the most cohesive/well-organised teams have been those with a healthy female/male mix. All our student engineers are excellent, and all bring their own knowledge, character and abilities to the work we do, but there is no doubt that the presence of women engineers in this sort of environment brings a quality of leadership and organisation that I wouldn’t be without.
So the women engineers who have worked on WUSAT over the past 18 years are highly regarded, and – in the main – have gone on to achieve very impressive careers. We have retained our own WUSAT alumni of all WUSAT team members since 2006, and hence, I still have contact with them, and they receive regular WUSAT Newsletters to keep them in touch with developments.
Midlands Innovation Space Group - A collaborative partnership between the eight leading Midlands Universities (UK) who have “Space” heritage.
International Women in Engineering Day (2024)
When the subject of supporting the International Women in Engineering Day (2024) was raised with our partners in the Midlands Innovation Space Group, this gave me an ideal opportunity to do something I’d had in mind for some time – to produce a presentation of the achievements of our WUSAT Women!
We have since been delighted to be in contact with Christina and Women-Space. We commend her efforts to promote and support career aspirations for women, and I hope that you find this selection of WUSAT Women engineers and their achievements motivational and inspirational!
I am very privileged to have been able to work with so many wonderful people over all the years I have been running WUSAT.
Dr Bill Crofts has directed the WUSAT Satellite Engineering Programme since he established it in 2006. The Programme is centred on the ES410 WUSAT Satellite Engineering Project but includes a wide range of external activities in which he promotes and represents Space Engineering at the University of Warwick and in the Midlands Region generally.
WUSAT has its own alumni of over 100 former WUSAT student engineers who have worked on WUSAT missions and taken their unique experience into industry and research (see ‘WUSAT Missions’ below).