Marie Françoise Ouedraogo

(Text by Jenneke Krüger)

Marie Françoise Ouedraogo grew up in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. She enjoyed doing maths in primary and secondary school and obtained good results without too much effort. So she studied mathematics at the University of Ouagadougou, where she wrote her first doctoral thesis on Lie Superalgebras, with Prof. Akry Koulibaly as her thesis advisor. She was awarded the doctorate in 1999, the first woman in Burkina Faso to receive a doctorate in mathematics.

She then went to the Blaise Pascal University of Clermont Ferrand (France), where she did research for and wrote a second thesis on pseudodifferential operators, with Prof. Sylvie Paycha and Akry Koulibaly as her advisors. Her Ph.D. thesis was accepted in 2009.

She teaches in the Mathematics Department of Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo. Her specialisations are pseudodifferential operators and superalgebras.

From 2009-2017 Marie-Françoise Ouedraogo was president of the Commission on Women in Mathematics (founded in 1986) of the African Mathematical Union (founded in 1976). During the International Congress of Women Mathematicians (2014) she listed problems for women mathematicians in Africa and actions and activities to remedy those problems.Marie Françoise Ouedraogo has published several papers, often in cooperation with other mathematicians. See also www.researgate.net.

References:

http://africanwomeninmath.org/women-in-math/report/african-women-doctorate-in-mathematics

http://www.icwm2014.org/20140812e/panelouedraogo