Nakalembe, Catherine

Bio

Dr. Nakalembe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, the Africa Program Director under NASA Harvest, and a member of the NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences Team on which she serves as the Agriculture and Food Security Thematic Lead. Catherine has broad research interests and leads projects focusing on the development methods and applications of satellite remote sensing and machine learning to agriculture and food security, land use and land-use change mapping, humanitarian mapping, and climate change, and supports several capacity-building in the use of remote sensing for agriculture monitoring and research.

She was the 2020 Africa Food Prize Laureate for her dedication to improving the lives of smallholder farmers by using satellite technology to harness data to guide agricultural decision-making. Her efforts have also promoted the formulation of policies and programs that directly impact farmers against the impacts of food failure. Dr. Nakalembe was a 2020 UMD Research Excellence Honoree and, in 2019, received the Inaugural GEO Individual Excellence Award. She was featured in the 2020 Women and GIS, Volume 2:  Stars of Spatial Science ESRI Press book. Her work led to the development and establishment of food security and crop monitoring bulletins that integrate satellite data, including the Tanzania National Food Security Bulletin, the Uganda National Integrated Early Warning Bulletin, Kenya and Rwanda Crop Monitor reports, and the Eastern Africa Crop Monitor as well as designing the trigger mechanism of the disaster risk financing program in Uganda that supported over 300,000 households in the Karamoja region as part of her Ph.D. research. Born and raised in Kampala, Uganda, and has a Bs. in Environmental Sciences from Makerere University, a Master of Science in Geography and Environmental Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, and a Ph.D. in Geographical Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Featured Faculty Profile: "Seeds of Impact: Catherine Nakalembe's Trailblazing Path"

Degrees

  • Geographical Sciences, Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland College Park - PhD

  • Geography and Environmental Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland - MS

  • Environmental Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala - BS

Research Topics

  • Nakalembe, Catherine, and Hannah R. Kerner. "Considerations for AI-EO for agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa." Environmental Research Letters (2023).
    • Nakalembe, C., Becker-Reshef, I., Bonifacio, R., Hu, G., Humber, M. L., Justice, C. J., … Sanchez, A. (2021). A review of satellite-based global agricultural monitoring systems available for Africa. Global Food Security, 29, 100543. https://doi.org/10.101
      • Nakalembe, C. (2020). Urgent and critical need for Sub-Saharan African countries to invest in Earth observation-based agricultural early warning and monitoring systems. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abc0bb
        • Nakalembe, C. (2020). Urgent and critical need for Sub-Saharan African countries to invest in Earth observation-based agricultural early warning and monitoring systems. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abc0bb
          • Becker-Reshef, I; Justice, C.; Barker, B.; Humber, M.; Whitcraft, A.; Nakalembe, C.; Rembold, F; Bonifacio, R.; Zappacosta, M; Budde, M.; Magadzire, T.; Shitote, C.; Pound J.; Constantino, A.; Mwangi, K.; Soube, S.; Newby, T.; Jarvis, I.; Verdin, J.
            • Laso Bayas H., See L., Perger C., Justice C., Nakalembe C., Dempewolf J., Fritz S. (2017) Validation of Automatically Generated Global and Regional Cropland Data Sets: The Case of Tanzania. Remote Sensing 9(8), 815; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9080815

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              Personal Website(s)

              Nakalembe-Headshot

              Catherine Nakalembe
              Assistant Professor

              | 4600 River Road, Suite 305 (send mail to 2181 LeFrak)

              | cnakalem@umd.edu

              Accepting New Students  No

              Media Availability  Yes