Aissa Wade

Wade was born in Dakar, Senegal.^[1] She studied mathematics at Cheikh Anta Diop University and graduated in 1993.^[2] She had to leave Senegal to earn a Ph.D. as there were no opportunities in Africa.^[3] Wade earned her Ph.D. at the University of Montpellier in 1996.^[2] Her thesis, "Normalisation formelle de structures de Poisson", considered symplectic geometry.^[4][5] Her doctoral advisor was Jean Paul Dufour.^[6][7]

Wade became a postdoctoral researcher at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, where she worked on conformal Dirac structures.^[2][8] She held visiting faculty positions at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, African University of Science and Technology and Paul Sabatier University.^[9] Wade joined Pennsylvania State University and was appointed full professor in 2016.

She served as a managing editor of The African Diaspora Journal of Mathematics.^[10] She is editor of Afrika Mathematika.^[9] She is on the scientific committee of the NextEinstein forum, an initiative to connect science, society and policy in Africa.^[11] As the President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Wade was the first woman to hold this role.^[12][13] She has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to support the Senegal Workshop on Geometric Structures.^[14][15] She has been involved with American Association for the Advancement of Science activities to enhance African STEM research, including the provision of evidence-based metrics, case studies and policy recommendations.^[16][17] In 2017 Wade was named a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.^[18][13]

Wade's accomplishments earned her recognition by Mathematically Gifted & Black, where she was featured as a Black History Month 2020 Honoree.^[19]