Meet Chinyere Ukeje, the 25-year-old Philadelphia computer scientist who won $300,000 NASA prize for Mars food system

Chinyere “Chichi” Ukeje, a 25-year-old computer scientist from Northeast Philadelphia, has won $300,000 after taking first place in NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table competition. Ukeje won the top prize for her innovative concept designed to help astronauts produce food during long-term missions on Mars and the Moon.

The NASA Deep Space Food Challenge sought ideas for food systems that could support astronauts living on the surfaces of Mars and the Moon, where regular food supplies from Earth would not be practical.

The competition challenged participants to explore innovative solutions for integrated space food systems that could provide safe, nutritious meals to astronauts living and working in space, NASA said in a release.


The original challenge focused on prototyping novel food production methods. The 2026 competition, however, asked teams to conceptualize space meals not as individual technology components but as a complete food-production system capable of providing a variety of foods while requiring limited crew time and maintenance.

After evaluating 113 submissions from teams across 33 countries and 28 U.S. states, NASA selected five winning teams for the 2026 challenge and awarded a combined $650,000 in prize money.

"Currently, astronaut meals are almost entirely cooked, packaged and sent to the International Space Station from the Space Food Systems Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. A one-way trip to Mars would take at least nine months, making it impractical to transport all the food required for long-duration missions. From shelf-stability concerns to strict mass limitations, pre-packaged food cannot be the sole option for future Martian astronauts," NASA said in a release.

To find viable solutions for future space food operations, teams were asked to design systems based on a mission scenario involving a 15-person astronaut crew spending 500 Martian sols, or about 513 Earth days, on the planet’s surface.

The challenge focused on surface operations and system integration. Each team was required to submit a design layout, meal plan, concept of operations and walkthrough video.

What is Chinyere Ukeje's Mars food system?

Ukeje’s winning concept, called Adaptive Nourishment Infrastructure (ANI), is named after Ani, the Nigerian Earth goddess associated with harvest and fertility. The name reflects Ukeje’s family roots in Nigeria and the Igbo community.

Faced with the challenge of feeding a 15-person crew for 500 Martian sols, Ukeje presented a modular food ecosystem that combines controlled-environment agriculture, fermentation, fungi cultivation and closed-loop nutrient recycling.

Her system is designed to produce about half of the crew’s food away from Earth while reducing the amount of food and supplies that would need to be transported from Earth.

Her design also addresses an often-overlooked challenge of long-duration space missions: the psychological impact of being away from home for years.

Under her concept, astronauts could turn nutritious food cubes into familiar meals, heat them using portable electric lunch boxes and share meals such as “taco night” or “Italian pasta night.”

“You want them to feel at home when they are millions of miles from home,” Ukeje told The Inquirer.

Ukeje, who grew up in Bowie, Maryland, now lives in Northeast Philadelphia with her husband. She is also pursuing a master’s degree in computer science at Johns Hopkins University.

She emerged as the winner from a competition that attracted entries from 28 states and 33 countries.

“I completely poured myself into this project,” Ukeje said.

Ukeje plans to use some of her winnings to support further research into food technology.