Ibra Dioum was born in Thiès, Senegal. After obtaining a DEUG in Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science (MPI) in 2002, he graduated with an Engineering Diploma in Telecommunications and Electronics from Gaston Berger University, Saint-Louis, Senegal, in 2005. In 2007, he completed a Research Master's degree in Engineering Sciences, specializing in Simulation and Modeling of Complex Systems, at the École Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP) of Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar.
He prepared his doctoral thesis jointly at the LEAT (Electronics, Antennas and Telecommunications Laboratory) of the Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France, and the LIRT (Computer Science, Networks and Telecommunications Laboratory) at ESP Dakar. His thesis, entitled "Design of multi-antenna systems for diversity and MIMO techniques: application to small communicating mobile objects", was supervised by Professor Cyril Luxey. He received the French National Doctorate in Electronics from Université Nice Sophia Antipolis and the Doctorate in Telecommunications from UCAD in 2013.
Recruited as an assistant lecturer in the Computer Engineering Department of ESP in 2008, he rose through the academic ranks to become Full Professor in Electronics and Telecommunications in 2022. He currently serves as Deputy Head of the Computer Science, Telecommunications and Applications Laboratory (LITA) and as Pedagogical Head of the M1 programmes in Systems, Networks and Telecommunications (SRT), Software Engineering and Information Systems (GLSI), Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (IABD), and Information Systems Security (SSI) at ESP/UCAD.
His research spans five main areas: (1) superdirective and reconfigurable multi-antenna systems for wireless applications (MIMO, 5G, IoT); (2) UHF RFID tag antenna design for complex environments and supply chain tracking; (3) wireless power transfer optimization in passive RFID tag networks; (4) Wi-Fi fingerprint-based indoor positioning using machine learning and deep learning (CNN, VGG16, Random Forest, XGBoost); and (5) LDPC-coded cooperative free-space optical communication systems. More recently, his work has expanded to edge computing and AI-driven sensing for precision agriculture, as well as IoT platforms for environmental monitoring and smart urban mobility.
He has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications in IEEE journals and conferences, including IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Journal of RFID, and Progress in Electromagnetics Research. He has supervised eight completed doctoral theses and numerous Master's and Engineering projects. He has served as Technical Program Chair of EAI AFRICOMM 2018, Chair of the Deep Learning IndabaX Senegal 2023 Program Committee, and Chair of the Cybersecurity Summer School Scientific Committee (2021–2024) in Dakar.
