Lola Fatoyinbo (PhD)

Kemi Ajumobi

February 10, 2026

Lola Fatoyinbo (PhD)
Visiting Professor at MIT, Space and Forest Ecologist & National Geographic Explorer

The inspiring story of Lola Fatoyinbo’s love for discovery started when she was in her teenage years. From Ivory Coast and then Benin in West Africa, she saw firsthand, what environmental pollution and deforestation caused and chose to do something about it especially as it also affected the poor. Traveling across nations with her parents aided her experiences of these situations and it spurred her desire even more to become an explorer and scientist. In her interview with Avery Truman, published in National Geographc (Newsroom), she said “When I saw that first image of Africa from space, I thought this is how astronauts must feel when they look down at Earth. I realised that I could use this data to explore every corner of our planet, especially those areas that were understudied or inaccessible.”

Today, Lola is a visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a National Geographic Explorer at National Geographic Society,  an external advisory board member at Congo Basin Institute, a Scientific Working Group Member at The Blue Carbon Initiative, and was a research scientist at NASA for over 15 years, where her responsibilities included conducting, publishing, presenting, and competing for funding for research focused on using and developing NASA technology to study the global carbon cycle, climate change, land use change and biodiversity. 45 + grants were received, 18 as principal investigator.

Lola’s passion includes earth observation of vegetation structure, carbon stocks, state and land cover change, science to support the UN sustainable development goals, characterising the vulnerability and response of coastal ecosystems to disturbances from land use and climate change, LiDAR and SAR remote sensing of upland and coastal ecosystem structure,  conservation, new instrument and new technology development, airborne and field campaigns, applications of carbon monitoring and ecosystem services accounting.

Each year, the EC50 recognises people who are doing remarkable work to promote science and exploration, and this reflects the diversity of individuals on the cutting edge of exploration around the world. Lola was recently honoured to be selected among them. According to her, “It’s such an honour to be amongst them, selected by The Explorers Club’s Club as part of the 2026 EC50 cohort, recognising ‘The Fifty People Changing the World that the World Needs to Know About’.” She said.

Lola Fatoyinbo is a recipient of the US Presidential Early Career Award in Sciences and Engineering, and the 2024 Royal Geographical Society Esmond B Martin Prize for her efforts on merging scientific priorities with advanced technology to develop innovative applications for ecosystems science. She bagged her B.A in Biology and PhD in Environmental Sciences, both from the University of Virginia, USA.