Dr. Nakalembe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, currently serving as the Africa Director under NASA Harvest and a member of the NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences Team, where she serves as the Agriculture and Food Security Thematic Lead. Her responsibilities include driving innovations in Earth observation (EO) technologies to improve monitoring, food security, and agricultural productivity in Africa.

Dr. Nakalembe's research interests span various topics, including satellite remote sensing, machine learning, land use and land-use change mapping, humanitarian mapping, and climate change. Her work has been instrumental in developing methods and systems for smallholder agriculture in Africa using remote sensing and machine learning. This has led to establishing satellite EO-based crop monitoring initiatives in multiple African countries.