Dr. Catherine Nakalembe

Dr. Catherine Nakalembe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland's Department of Geographical Sciences. She leads research developing remote sensing and machine learning applications for smallholder agriculture, early warning of food insecurity, and disaster assessment in Africa. As the Africa Director under NASA Harvest and a member of the NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences team, she has made significant contributions to the advancement of Earth observation technologies, which have been instrumental in improving food security in Africa.

Dr. Nakalembe's expertise and commitment to her work have been recognized with several awards, including the 2022 Golden Jubilee Gold Medal, the Highest Civilian Award in Uganda, the 2020 Africa Food Prize from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and an Individual Excellence Award from Group on Earth Observations in Geneva, Switzerland in 2019. She has also been featured in the book "Earth, Oceans, and Skies: Insights from Selected, Outstanding African Women Scientists" by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and named one of the "10 Women Scientists Leading the Fight Against the Climate Crisis" by Global Citizen. Additionally, my work on the NASA Harvest-IRCAI project was named one of the top 10 outstanding projects.