Left to Right: Stuart Minchin (Chief of the Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia), Yana Gevorgyan (International Relations Specialist, NOAA), Catherine Nakalembe (UMD – Harvest)

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:

1. being instrumental in generating energy within a community that has led to significant progress or achievements
2. using creative and innovative approaches to achieve collaboration
3. overcoming administrative, political, institutional or structural barriers to advance the goals of a community
4. engaging or mentoring youth
5. 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.

Dr. Nakalembe organizes and leads trainings on remote sensing tools and data, works with national ministries on their agriculture decision-making processes, and heads initiatives to support proactive efforts to prevent potentially disastrous impacts of crop failure. She has collaborated with Eastern African government leaders, ag extension agents, regional farmers, and groups such as the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) and the Regional Centre For Mapping Resource For Development (RCMRD) to further the use of Earth observation (EO) in driving positive change for food security in some of the most vulnerable regions in the world. She is an advocate for building trust and local capacity through collaboration and data-sharing, enabling ministry leaders to feel confident in proactively dedicating resources towards food security rather than retroactively addressing the negative impacts of major food events. Due in part to her tireless efforts, policies and programs have been put in place that directly impact the lives of farmers and those most defenceless against the impacts of food failure. She also leads NASA Harvest activities in Mali working with National Agencies in Mali including the Système d'Alerte Précoce (SAP) in the food security commission under the Relief to Resilience (R2R) project partnering with Lutheran World Relief.

Dr. Nakalembe has emerged as one of the foremost experts in her areas of work and her direct impacts have garnered much attention throughout the scientific community and media including:

• New Vision Uganda’s Leading Daily
• Group on Earth Observations
• Space in Africa
• NASA Science
• AgriLinks
• IGAD
• Climate Change and Satellites

Read more about Dr. Nakalembe’s work and global impacts:

• Relief 2 Resilience in the Sahel
• Status and Opportunities for Tanzania Agrometeorological Services
• Supporting National Agriculture Monitoring in Eastern Africa
• Catherine Nakalembe Introduces Harvest at the Least Developed Countries Expert Group Meeting and the National Adaptation Plan Development Workshop
• ICPAC Signs an MOU with NASA Harvest
• Building Capacity for Reporting Crop Conditions in Rwanda
• Lutheran World Relief launches Partnership with NASA Harvest
• NASA Administrator Highlights Harvest Program Impact in Uganda at World Ag Expo
• Lutheran World Relief Responds to Critical Food Needs in West Africa’s Sahel
• A New Partnership to Deploy Sustainable Hi-tech Automated Agro-meteorological Stations for Improved Ag-decisions in East Africa
• Harvest Partner Dr. Catherine Nakalembe Leads Training on Uganda Crop and Livestock Conditions’ Monitoring Data Collection Training in Support of NUSAF3’s Disaster Risk Financing Program
• In Nairobi, Kenya, Harvest partner Catherine Nakalembe Leads Innovative Crop Monitor Training

You can reach out to the Harvest team via email at info@nasaharvest.org or contact Dr. Nakalembe directly at cnakalem@umd.edu.