Catherine Nakalembe Receives GEO Individual Excellence Award
Harvest is proud to announce that Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, Harvest Eastern Africa Lead and capacity-building expert, is one of the inaugural winners of the 2019 GEO Individual Excellence Awards. This award recognizes scientists who have dedicated their valuable time, resources, and energy towards highly impactful missions with palpable results. Award nomination criteria, per the GEO Programme Board, include:
being instrumental in generating energy within a community that has led to significant progress or achievements
using creative and innovative approaches to achieve collaboration
overcoming administrative, political, institutional or structural barriers to advance the goals of a community
engaging or mentoring youth
advancing a diverse and inclusive GEO.
Dr. Nakalembe no doubt excels at all of these criteria and was selected from a competitive pool of over 20 highly qualified individuals. Her passion and dedication to increased food security throughout Eastern African countries including Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda is undeniable. She is a proud Ugandan native, earning her BSc. at Makerere University in Environmental Science, her MSc. in Geography and Environmental Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University, and her Ph.D. in Geographical Science at the University of Maryland. Her doctoral research highlighted the impacts of drought on land use and on the lives of North Eastern Ugandans and formed the basis of the remote sensing component of the Disaster Risk Financing Project that has supported over 75,000 households (370,000 people) in the region since initial scaleup in 2017 and saving the Uganda government resources that would otherwise go towards emergency assistance. She revolutionized and repurposed remote sensing by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from use in agricultural monitoring to surveying refugee settlements and landslide mapping in Uganda. In addition to her current role with NASA Harvest, her widespread scope of duties include her contributions as a PI on the NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences Team (AST), the incoming Thematic Lead on Food Security and Agriculture for the AST, and serving as the Program Assistant for the NASA Land Cover and Land Use Change Program. Beyond being an exemplary scientist and food security activist, Dr. Nakalembe is also a "Nalongo" - a proud mother of young twins.
“Catherine has done a fantastic job in two of our NASA Earth Applied Sciences’ programs, Harvest and Disasters. Her work on landslides will save lives and her work with Harvest will feed generations to come,” said Lawrence Friedl, co-chair of USGEO and lead of NASA Earth Applied Sciences Program, “we are all so happy to celebrate her achievements, and I was so proud watching her receive the award at the GEO ceremony.” Her work has brought food security to the forefront of conversations globally not only in the scientific community, but also in the media. Watch Dr. Nakalembe’s feature in the Ugandan news (NTV Uganda) for her presentation of the award to the Ugandan Prime Minister, the Ministers of Disaster Preparedness, and the permanent secretary during the government steering committee meeting on November 14th, 2019.