Dr. Catherine Nakalembe

In March 2024, I co-lead the GEOGLAM Crop Monitoring Learning Exchange Workshop held in Naivasha, Kenya, and was Featured in the Forbes Africa Magazine spotlight of women trailblazers in its Over 30 Under 50

In January  2024, I delivered the 2023-2024 Distinguished Loewy Lecture, Georgetown University’s Science, Technology, and International Affairs Program, and A London Science Museum Group Climate Talk on How climate change impacts food security and global food supply chains with Rt Hon Lord Deben and Professor Rattan Lal. 

Some highlights from 2023 include being honored as one of Africa's Top 100 Most Influential African Leaders at the Africa Tech Festival, presenting keynotes at conferences like Tropentag 2023 and the Open Day dell'Innovazione 2023, co-organizing workshops like the ICLR 2023 Workshop on Machine Learning for Remote Sensing, and publishing papers on topics related to agriculture, food security, and earth observation in Africa. She continues to advance the use of satellite data and AI to support smallholder farmers and food security on the continent.

In November 2023, I was awarded the 2022 AL Sumait Prize for African Development. The Board of Trustees of the Al-Sumait Prize for African Development (https://www.AlSumaitPrize.org/) announced that the Al-Sumait Prize 2022 was jointly awarded to Dr. Catherine Nakalembe and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation. "The Board added that Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, from Uganda, won the Prize for being a distinguished expert in crop mapping and monitoring, using remote sensing and machine learning techniques. She also leads the NASA Harvest Africa program at the University of Maryland, which provides methods and systems to smallholder farmers in Africa, enhancing their skills." Press release

In July 2023, I was elected to serve on the Council of the American Geographical Society (AGS).

In March 2023, the Africa Tech Festival and Connecting Africa named me one of Africa's Top 100 Most Influential African Leaders.

Some of my recent publications include a paper with Borges et al. on integrating Earth observations into national risk reduction decision structures, a paper with Kerner on considerations for AI-EO for agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa ranked In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric, a paper with Kerner et al. on the accuracy of existing land cover maps for agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, and more.

Some recent internet and blog stories about me include a Devex Dish article on how NASA is fighting food insecurity by Teresa Welsh on March 22, 2023 and a Devex article by Catherine Cheney on how I use satellites to help African farmers on March 20, 2023.

I presented on  "The Interplay of Agriculture, Land Use, Climate Change, and Food Security" at Tropentag 2023 at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany on September 20, 2023, during the opening session. The conference opened with welcome speeches from distinguished speakers, including Germany's Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Cem Özdemir, the President of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Prof. Dr. Julia von Blumenthal, and keynotes by Johan Swinnen, and Jody Harris. Tropentag Student Reporters of Tropentag 2023 interviewed me about my professional journey. The video of this interview can be accessed here. The recording of my keynote presentation is available here; my speech starts at ~04:01:30, and the panel discussion at ~04:36:30.

Was featured on the World Bank's Development Podcast Episode 39 on tackling food insecurity from emergency to resilience on September 29, 2023.

Hosted the Kenya Yield Workshop on enabling crop analytics at scale in July 2023.

Spoke in a Planery Land & Carbon Lab Summit in Brussels, Belgium, on new frontiers in geospatial monitoring on June 27, 2023, and on June 28, 2023, about EO and ML for agriculture monitoring for food security at the Land and Carbon Lab Summit in Brussels, Belgium

I presented a keynote address at the Open Day dell’Innovazione 2023 on June 28, 2023.

Participated in a plenary session on what agricultural statisticians can learn from agricultural economists at the International Conference on Agricultural Statistics in Washington, DC, May 17-19, 2023.

I helped co-organized the ICLR 2023 Workshop on Machine Learning for Remote Sensing on May 5, in Kigali, Rwanda.

Presented on advancing the use of Earth observations and machine learning for agriculture monitoring for food security in Africa at the Tufts University Nutrition Data Symposium virtually on March 8, 2023.

Was featured on The Future Laboratory's podcast Back to the F**kture on January 5, 2023 and on the TWIMLAI podcast Supporting Food Security in Africa Using ML in January 2023.

Spoke at the Devex Dish event on technology and innovation to feed the world at SXSW in Austin, Texas and online on March 13, 2023.

Presented virtually at Google Research on March 13, 2023.

Presented at the Academic Data Science Alliance in Arvin, California on March 16, 2023.

I was honored to be named one of Africa's Top 100 Most Influential African Leaders at the Africa Tech Festival in March 2023.

In September 2022, I was the Keynote Speaker at the First US-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine forum.

In August 2022, I was included in the Project Management Institute's Future 50 2022 list.

In 2022, I was Featured in "Earth, Oceans, and Skies: Insights from Selected, outstanding African Women Scientists" published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

In April 2022, I was recognized by GLOBAL CITIZEN as one of 10 Women Scientists Leading the Fight Against the Climate Crisis.

In March 2022, I was highlighted by NASA Applied Sciences as one of Six Women in Science who Make our World Go Round.

In February 2022, the NASA Harvest Africa work I lead was recognized as one of the top 10 outstanding projects by the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence.

I gave a presentation on The NASA Harvest Africa Program Agricultural Monitoring Overview at the Kenya Space Agency Conference on June 21-23, 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya.

I participated in a panel on Evidence-based decision-making at the GLF Africa 2022 Digital Conference: How to build an equitable, resilient food future. Plenary Session on Land, Food, and Climate: African solutions for food and climate resilience on September 15, 2022.

I presented on Transforming African Agriculture to Mitigate the Twin Challenges of Climate Change and Food Insecurity at AWIEF2022 in Cairo, Egypt on September 22, 2022.

I spoke on Machine Learning in Agriculture for Climate Adaptation at the APEC-PPFS Webinar on Digitalization and Innovation of APEC Food System (Virtual) on December 1, 2022.

I co-presented with Hannah Kerner on Supporting Food Security in Africa using Machine Learning and Earth Observations at the Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop at the 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on December 3, 2022.

In September 2021, Devex listed me as one of 6 African food security experts to watch.

In September 2021, I was named a Quartz Africa Innovator.

In April 2021, I was recognized by ABC NEWS as one of the Women Leading the Climate Fight.

In March 2021, I was featured in Tomorrow.io's Women of Weather series.

In March 2021, I was celebrated by the Radiant Earth Foundation as one of 15 Women Leading the ML4EO Community

In November 2020, NASA named me An Innovator in International Food Security.

In November 2020, I was a Maryland Research Excellence Honoree at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In 2020, I was featured in Volume 2 of Esri Press's "Stars of Spatial Science: Women and GIS."

In October 2022, I was selected as the inaugural Winner of The Future Laboratory's Futures 100 Innovators award.

In September 2022, I received the Golden Jubilee Gold Medal, the Highest Civilian Award from Uganda.

In 2021, I became a Fellow of the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub.

In 2021, I was named a Quartz Africa Innovator.

In 2020, I received the Africa Food Prize from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. The Africa Food Prize is the preeminent award recognizing an outstanding individual or institution leading the effort to change the reality of farming in Africa—from a struggle to survive to a business that thrives. The prize celebrates Africans who are taking control of Africa’s agriculture agenda. It highlights bold initiatives and technical innovations that can be replicated across the continent to create a new era of food security and economic opportunity for all Africans.

In 2019, I received the inaugural Individual Excellence Award from the Group on Earth Observations in Geneva, Switzerland.

I attended the Information for Meeting Africa’s Agricultural Transformation and Food Security Goals (IMAAFS) conference from October 1-3, 2014.

I organized the Spurring a Transformation for Agriculture through Remote Sensing (STARS) Workshop on July 22, 2014.

I presented at the Next Gen Drought Index WEBINAR on June 15-16, 2020.

I spoke at the Stakeholder Community Meeting on Mitigating the Impacts of COVID-19 on Food on July 30, 2020.

I was a panelist at the KDD Fragile Earth Panel, Ai4Good, on August 25, 2020.

I participated in the Food Systems Summit Dialogue (FSSD) for North America on November 19, 2020.

In September 2021, Devex listed me as one of 6 African food security experts to watch.

In September 2021, I was named a Quartz Africa Innovator.

In April 2021, I was recognized by ABC NEWS as one of the Women Leading the Climate Fight.

In March 2021, I was featured in Tomorrow.io's Women of Weather series.

In March 2021, I was celebrated by the Radiant Earth Foundation as one of 15 Women Leading the ML4EO Community.

I participated in a panel on META-11: Sustainable Agriculture from Space in November 2021.

I spoke at the 8th Annual ReNAPRI Stakeholders Conference on November 19, 2021.

I gave a GEO briefing to the U.S. Embassies in Africa (Virtual) on December 7, 2021.

I presented at the Crucial Discussion of Climate Change/its impact on our communities, hosted by GeNell Gary, City of Albany, California, on September 29, 2021.

I delivered a keynote presentation on agriculture, land use, climate change, and food security at the Tropentag 2023 conference held in Berlin, Germany, on September 20, 2023.

The CropHarvest dataset I co-created was published on Radiant MLHub in August 2022.

In August 2022, I helped organize and instruct at the NASA SERVIR Eastern Africa Hub training at the University of Maryland.

I co-organized the NASA Harvest Scalable Cropland Mapping Workshop held in August 2022.

I was featured on the Minds Behind Maps podcast in July 2022, discussing food security solutions in Africa.

I co-organized a tutorial on applying machine learning for remote sensing at the CVPR conference held in June 2022.

I spoke on a panel at the Kenya Space Agency Conference on enhancing food security with space technologies in June 2021.

I presented my research applying AI and satellites for agriculture in Africa at the Women in Data Science Cambridge conference in March 2022.

I was featured on the Choosing Leadership podcast in March 2022, discussing my leadership journey.

I presented on applications and ethical considerations for using AI and satellites to support agriculture in Africa at the AAAI-22 conference held in February 2022.

I was honored by the University of Maryland's International Research Centre on AI as one of their Top 100 researchers in February 2022.

In January 2022, I was featured in stories by NASA Applied Sciences and the Washington Post about women scientists spearheading solutions to address climate change.

I was named a Quartz Africa Innovator for 2021 in September 2021 for my work leveraging technology to drive agricultural transformation in Africa.

I was featured as a female innovator advancing breakthroughs in technology by Quartz Africa in September 2021.

I was selected as one of Project Management Institute's Future 50 honorees in August 2021, recognizing my potential to advance future organizational success through project management.

I had the opportunity to participate in the P.A.I.S.S. PRAIRIE Artificial Intelligence Summer School in July 2021.

I was invited to speak on challenges and opportunities in applying earth observation technologies in Africa at the Africa-Europe Space Earth Observation Forum held in Lisbon, Portugal in June 2021.

I co-led an academic workshop on machine learning techniques for global crop yield and condition forecasting held in May 2021.

In April 2021, my work as a female scientist combating climate change was highlighted by Global Citizen.

I was featured in a series published by NASA Applied Sciences in March 2021 about women driving advancements in science and technology.

My contributions as a leading African female climate scientist were showcased in a magazine by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in February 2021.

I was honored to give a technical keynote on harnessing satellites and machine learning to strengthen food security in Africa at the MKAI Forum held in January 2021.

I delivered a public lecture in December 2020 hosted by the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) focused on career growth opportunities in Africa.

I was recognized as a 2020 Maryland Research Excellence Honoree by the University of Maryland for my scientific contributions in November 2020.

My pathbreaking work as a scientist in Uganda was featured in a magazine profile in October 2020.

I was invited to join a podcast episode from ESIP in October 2020, discussing building effective public-private partnerships to increase the socioeconomic value of scientific data.

My work to advance agricultural transformation in Africa was showcased in a magazine feature from Africa Positive in October 2020.

I joined a podcast by Tomorrow.io in September 2020, celebrating women trailblazers tackling climate change.

The Alliance awarded me the prestigious 2020 Africa Food Prize for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) for my scientific contributions to fighting hunger and poverty.

In July 2020, I was interviewed by USAID leadership about how earth observations can catalyze agricultural transformation in Africa.

I was featured in a video series from NASA in June 2020 highlighting women leading innovations in earth science.

I participated in an academic webinar on monitoring approaches for food security risk factors held in May 2020.

I co-authored a paper published in Remote Sensing of Environment in April 2020, applying machine learning to estimate crop yields in Africa.

I was featured in a virtual fireside chat on AI applications for agriculture hosted by the ICLR conference in April 2020.

In March 2020, I was included in an Esri series recognizing accomplished women in geospatial technology.

My research using satellites and machine learning to strengthen food security was publicized by my university and SpaceRef in February 2020.

I authored an article in AgriPulse in January 2020 discussing how NASA technology advances food production globally.

My academic department congratulated me in December 2019 for receiving the GEO Individual Excellence Award.

In November 2019, I was awarded the inaugural GEO Individual Excellence Award for my scientific contributions and presented it to the government of Uganda.

In October 2019, I helped organize specialized training on implementing an early warning system for landslides across Uganda.

I was invited to give a talk in September 2019 on applying earth observations for agriculture monitoring at the USAID Mission in Mali.

In August 2019, I had the opportunity to teach a course on African irrigation strategies at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science & Technology.

I organized hands-on national crop monitoring training in Rwanda and Kenya in July 2019.

I co-led the 6th GEOGLAM RAPP and SDG Workshop held in Nairobi, Kenya in June 2019.

USAID featured my work supporting smallholder farmers in Africa with access to NASA satellite data in a blog post in May 2019.

In April 2019, Lutheran World Relief announced a new collaboration with my NASA Harvest program.

In March 2019, I spearheaded trainings across East Africa focused on leveraging satellite data for crop monitoring and food security.

In February 2019, I organized specialized workshops on developing national crop monitoring systems tailored for Kenya and Tanzania.

In October 2018, my team launched an innovative partnership to install automated weather stations across East Africa to empower data-driven agricultural decisions.

I played a key role in developing Kenya's first operational national crop monitoring system for strengthening food security, established in July 2018.

I participated in the 4th GEOGLAM RAPP and SDG Workshop held in Nairobi, Kenya in May 2018.

I spoke on an expert panel about open data innovations for agriculture at the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Summit held in May 2018.

USAID interviewed me about how earth observations can catalyze agricultural transformation in Africa.

I co-led the 2nd NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences Team Meeting held in September 2017.

I presented at a USAID workshop in December 2017 focused on integrating earth observations into their global agricultural programs.

In February 2017, I gave a talk at the Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum about using remote sensing to improve agricultural decisions.

AGU interviewed me about my perspectives as an early career scientist in December 2016.

In October 2016, I presented my research on applying drones for agriculture at the AARSE conference hosted in Uganda.

I co-led the kickoff meeting for NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences Team-2 held in September 2016.

In July 2016, I conducted specialized training across Tanzania focused on tools for agricultural monitoring and assessing food security.

I helped organize the NASA LCLUC Science Team Meeting held in June 2016.

In April 2016, I led a hands-on workshop for practitioners in Uganda focused on mobile tools for field data collection.

I held a collaborative workshop to design an improved food security monitoring system for Tanzania in March 2016.

I organized and facilitated a high-level workshop on agricultural monitoring to strengthen food security for key stakeholders in Tanzania in February 2016.

I presented at the STARS Technical Workshop in Dakar, Senegal, in October 2015.

I spearheaded a high-level meeting focused on innovative agricultural monitoring approaches to improve Uganda's food security in September 2015.

I conducted a training workshop on sampling methodologies for crop monitoring in Tanzania in April 2015.

In March 2015, I organized a hands-on workshop for practitioners in Tanzania about mobile data collection for food security monitoring.

In December 2014, I helped organize a GEO-WIKI competition at Sokoine University of Agriculture to map croplands in Tanzania using crowdsourcing.

I had the honor of presenting my early research on African weather and climate at the summer colloquium hosted by NCAR-UCAR in Colorado in October 2011.

In 2012, I received the O.E. Baker Award for Outstanding Graduate Student from the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland.

In 2012, I received Special Excellence recognition as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland.

From 2003 to 2006, I received a Government of Uganda Scholarship to pursue studies at Makerere University Kampala.