Monica Adjei

Monica Adjei is a Faculty Specialist at the Xylem Lab, University of Maryland, where she works closely with Dr. Catherine Nakalembe across research, communications, and outreach. She holds an M.S. in Geospatial Information Science from the University of Maryland and a B.A. in Geography & Resource Development and Dance Studies from the University of Ghana, Legon, a combination that reflects both her technical foundation and her belief in the power of storytelling.

Ms. Adjei joined the lab in Fall 2024 as a Teaching Assistant and has since taken on a role that bridges research and communication. Her day-to-day work covers scientific writing and policy brief drafting, grant proposal editing and review, outreach management and event planning, and ensuring that scientific documents are clear, consistent, and accessible to a range of audiences. She also manages the lab's Circle community and oversees publications on the Xylem Lab page.

On the research side, Ms. Adjei is currently working with Dr. Nakalembe on mapping cacao agroforestry (CAF) in Madagascar using multi-sensor remote sensing. The focus is on creating an accurate land use map that differentiates CAF from surrounding land cover types including natural forest, rice, and other crops, to support farmer livelihoods and conservation efforts in one of the world's most biodiverse regions. She is also contributing to a comprehensive encyclopedia the lab is building to document agricultural, environmental, and socioeconomic conditions across African countries to support broader food security efforts on the continent. Her technical background is grounded in GIS and remote sensing tools including ArcGIS Pro and QGIS, as well as experience with Python, SQL, PHP, HTML, and CSS.

Before joining the lab in 2024, Ms. Adjei served as an Administrative Assistant at the Office of Research Innovation and Development at the University of Ghana, Legon, and interned as a reporter and news anchor at Radio Univers. Those experiences shaped how she thinks about communication, not just as a skill, but as a responsibility to make complex ideas accessible to the people they are meant to serve. Ms. Adjei is a first-generation university student and a freelance writer and orator outside of her research life.