Catherine Nakalembe is an Ugandan remote sensing scientist and an associate research professor at the University of Maryland (UMD) in the Department of Geographical Sciences and the NASA Harvest Africa program Director.

[3][2] After undergraduate studies, she received a partial scholarship for the master’s program in geography and environmental engineering at the Johns Hopkins University.

It was the first step in forming the basis of the remote sensing element of the disaster risk financing project which has supported over 75,000 households in the region since initial scaleup in 2017 and saving the Uganda government resources that would otherwise go towards emergency assistance.

[7] Nakalembe organizes and leads training on remote sensing tools and data, works with national ministries on their agricultural decision-making processes, and heads initiatives to prevent potentially disastrous impacts of crop failure.

[3] As of 2020, Nakalembe is married to Sebastian Deffner,[15] an associate professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).