AI Expert: Senegal Is Helping Showcase Africans In STEM

The first Black female faculty is Adji Bousso Dieng from the Princeton University of Engineering. Adji Bousso Dieng, an AI researcher from Senegal, not only contributed to generative modelling but also helped Africans in STEM to tell their own success stories as she became one of the first Black female faculty of computer science in the Ivy League. Dieng currently works in the field of artificial intelligence, called generational modelling, as a Google researcher and as the incoming computer science faculty for Princeton. 

Dieng launched The African I Know (TAIK), the African platform highlighting successful careers for Africans. The platform highlights how Africans use technology to solve problems of development – agriculture, health and education, as Africans claim. 

In Dieng’s opinion, a COVID-19 crisis has speeded up its TAIK launch plans, because a number of countries in Africa have taken advantage of COVID-19 technology to tackle it. But the media have ignored that. 

In a sparsely populated area in Senegal, Dieng was born and raised in Kaolak, where her mom enlisted her with the public school system of Kaolack. Though Dieng’s mother did not finish secondary school, she knew how important education is. 

Once the Pathfinder Foundation for Education and Development has won the STEM competition for African students, Dieng has been awarded a scholarship for studying abroad. Dieng studied in France and received a Telecom ParisTech engineering degree in France and a Master’s degree in Statistics in the United States from Cornell University.