Rose Sophie Fatima Dieng, also known as Rose Dieng-Kuntz or Rose Dieng (March 27, 1956 – June 30, 2008), was a Senegalese computer scientist and researcher who specialized in artificial intelligence.^{[15,16,1,27,42]} Born in Dakar, Senegal, she moved to France in 1976, where she became the first African woman (and the first woman from Black Africa) to enroll at the prestigious French École Polytechnique in Paris.^{[1,11,13,14,16,27,31,15,42]} She earned her PhD from the École Polytechnique, with her area of specialization being the specification of parallelism in computer programs.

In France, she worked at INRIA (the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation), a French national research institution studying computer science, control theory, and applied mathematics, where her research focused on knowledge sharing via the internet and the World Wide Web. Following the emergence and availability of the World Wide Web, she conducted significant research, becoming one of the most prominent and leading contributors to knowledge sharing, knowledge management, and the Semantic Web.^[20,6] A recipient of the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize, she was actively engaged in passing on her passion for science to students, particularly women, and her name is to be added to the Eiffel Tower.^[1,11,13,14] Regarding her vision of the future, she stated: "Regarding the future, what I see is a 'knowledge Web' that will bring together individuals, organizations, countries, and continents. The research we aim for seeks to improve collaboration between the business world and the community in order to build 'knowledge networks', and this aligns with Europe's goal to evolve from an "information society" to a 'knowledge society'. "^[17]

She died in Nice, France, on June 30, 2008, following a long illness.^{[15,16,27,42]} Her death received national media coverage, prompting the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, Valérie Pécresse, to express sadness and announce: "France and the world of science have lost a visionary mind and an immense talent".^[8]

Rose Sophie Fatima Dieng-Kuntz was born on March 27, 1956, in Dakar, Senegal.^[2] She grew up in Senegal in a family of seven children from a very humble background, with an illiterate mother.^[3,4,25] She received a strict education—for which she would claim to be grateful—where the only conceivable way to thrive was through school.^[8] She attended the Lycée Van-Vollenhoven in Dakar, where she excelled as a student in mathematics, French, Latin, and Greek, and won several first prizes in the Senegalese General Competition.^[3,4,17,25] She graduated with honors after passing her baccalaureate in 1972 according to Arabic and English sources, or in 1973 according to German sources.^[3,4,25]

With a cooperation scholarship to study mathematics in Paris, she arrived in France after her baccalaureate to attend preparatory classes at the Lycée Fénelon.^[17] In 1976, at the age of twenty, Dieng-Kuntz became the first African woman to be admitted to study at the prestigious French École polytechnique.^[2,30] She continued her studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (now Télécom Paris), obtaining an engineering degree in 1980.^{[2,18,21,4,29,35,34]} In parallel with her specialization at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, she completed a Diploma of Advanced Studies (DEA) in computer science, and subsequently earned a doctorate from the University of Paris-Sud with a thesis on the specification of parallelism in computer programs.^{[5,3,18,19,21,29,17,35,34]}

After completing her PhD, Dieng-Kuntz began working in artificial intelligence for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).^[18,29] At Digital Equipment, she met Pierre Haren, who wished to create a research group at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA)—a French national research center focused on computer science, control theory, and applied mathematics—to develop expert system generators where her field of expertise was knowledge sharing on the World Wide Web. In 1985, she left Digital to join the SMECI project led by Haren at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, which aimed to develop a generic tool for subsequently building an entire series of applications. Dieng-Kuntz was in charge of "explanations" on the project, with the goal of creating an expert system capable of explaining its reasoning to users.^[18] When Haren left INRIA in 1988, she remained at INRIA, and the SMECI project became the SECOIA project, directed by Bertrand Neveu. She then developed an interest in data acquisition systems, and from 1992 until 2006 she served as the second female head of a research group at INRIA, leading the ACACIA project (Acquisition des connaissances pour l'assistance à la conception par interaction entre agents) at the Sophia Antipolis center.^[22] The EDELWEISS project later developed out of ACACIA, which Dieng led after a long illness until her death.^[4]

Her latest research focused on knowledge management and the Semantic Web, and she authored nine books and more than one hundred articles on artificial intelligence, knowledge management, ontology, the semantic web, conceptual graphs, and multi-agent systems. She was also very active in spreading her passion for science among students, particularly female students. Dieng-Kuntz passed away in 2008 as a result of a long illness, and her death received national media coverage.^[4] Following her death, the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, Valérie Pécresse, expressed her sadness in a statement declaring: "France and the world of science have just lost a visionary mind and an immense talent".^[23] On the campus of Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, the street where the research institute for computer science is located bears her name.

Rose Dieng-Kuntz grew up in Senegal in a family of seven brothers and sisters, coming from a very humble background with an illiterate mother. She received a strict education—for which she would express gratitude—in which the only way to prosper was through schooling. She studied at the Van-Vollenhoven high school in Dakar, where she excelled in mathematics, French, Latin, and Greek, before obtaining a scholarship to continue her studies in Paris at the Lycée Fénelon.^[17] In 1976, she became the first African woman to enroll and study at the prestigious French École Polytechnique. After graduating in engineering from the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, she earned her PhD in computer science at the University of Paris-Sud, specializing in the specification of parallelism.^[8,17]

While English and Arabic sources state that her professional career began in 1985 at INRIA, French and Galician sources state that she was first employed in artificial intelligence by Digital Equipment Corporation.^[6,8] At Digital Equipment Corporation, she met Pierre Haren, who wanted to create a research group at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA)—a French national research institution focused on computer science, control theory (or closed-loop control), and applied mathematics—to develop expert system generators.^[6,28] In 1985, Dieng-Kuntz left Digital to work at INRIA, where she remained until 2008 and specialized in knowledge sharing over the World Wide Web.^[6,28] She initially joined the SMECI project led by Haren, which aimed to develop a generic tool for building a wide series of applications, where she was in charge of "explanations" to create an expert system capable of explaining its reasoning to users. When Haren left INRIA in 1988, Dieng-Kuntz stayed at the institute, and the SMECI project became the SECOIA project led by Bertrand Neveu.

Dieng-Kuntz subsequently developed an interest in knowledge acquisition systems, and in 1992 became the second woman to lead an INRIA research project or program when she was appointed scientific leader of the ACACIA research unit at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, a technology park near Nice in southern France, a role she held until the project's completion in 2006. ACACIA is an acronym for "Acquisition des Connaissances pour l'Assistance à la Conception par Interaction entre Agents" (Knowledge Acquisition for Assistance/Support in Design by Interaction between Agents).^[6,7] Her research focused on knowledge exchange and sharing on the Internet, knowledge organization, and information retrieval, particularly in the context of the early Semantic Web, the collaborative web, and big data.^[6,26,8,32] Her primary and latest research focused on knowledge management and the Semantic Web, an interest that began as early as 1998 when its importance to knowledge engineering was first emerging.^[7,26,8] Michel Cosnard (Consard in English sources), director of INRIA Sophia Antipolis, emphasized her exceptional researcher qualities, particularly her foresight in studying knowledge modeling and acquisition shortly after the invention of the World Wide Web and well before its widespread use.^[6]

Dieng-Kuntz was very active in reaching out to students, and female students in particular, to communicate her passion and enthusiasm for science.^[29] When interviewed in January 2005 by Pierre Le Hir of Le Monde, she explained that she shared her life story "to show how a Black woman can thrive in scientific research as a welcome immigrant to France, and that there she can assume responsibilities and pass her passion on to young people, especially young women."^[6,9] In her own words regarding the future, she stated: "As far as the future is concerned, my vision is that of a web of knowledge linking individuals, organisations, countries and continents. The research we are aiming for seeks to improve cooperation between business and the community by building “knowledge webs,” a goal that is in phase with the Europe's target of evolving from an “information society” to a “knowledge society.”"^[6,23] Dieng-Kuntz died in 2008 following a long illness, and her death received national media coverage in France. France's Minister of Higher Education and Research, Valérie Pécresse, expressed sadness and issued a statement honoring her: "France and the world of science have just lost a visionary and enormous talent."^[29,19]

She died in June 2008 after a long struggle with illness. Her death received widespread national media coverage in France and Senegal. Valérie Pécresse, then Minister of Higher Education and Research in France, expressed her sorrow in a press statement announcing the death of Rose Dieng-Kuntz, stating that "France and the world of science have just lost a visionary mind and an immense talent."^[8,10]

Dieng-Kuntz received the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in 2005 and was named a Knight (Chevalier) of the Legion of Honour in 2006.^[32] In 2013, her name was given to a street in the Chantrerie innovation park northeast of Nantes, followed by a square on the Paris-Saclay campus in 2017.^[37] In 2019, one of the lecture halls in the new Télécom Paris premises, where she had studied after Polytechnique, was named after her. An annex of the Birago Diop high school of excellence in Golf Sud, Senegal, bears her name, as does the avenue on the Paul Sabatier University campus in Toulouse where the Toulouse Institute of Computer Science Research (IRIT) is located.^[40,38] On June 7, 2023, the Council of Paris named a new street allée Rose-Dieng-Kuntz, and on March 20, 2025, her name was given to a lecture hall at the Polytech Nice-Sophia school of Université Côte-d'Azur, where she spent most of her career.^[39]

In 2026, it was announced that Dieng-Kuntz was selected as one of 72 historical women in STEM—covering three centuries of history from 1712 to 2025—whose names were proposed to be added around the perimeter of the first floor of the Eiffel Tower alongside 71 other women scientists, above where only 72 male scientists had been engraved in 1889, as part of the Hypatia Project.^[9,41] Although it had at one time been agreed that only French women should be included, Benjamin Rigaud, the originator of the idea, proposed that Rose Dieng-Kuntz be included in the initial list of just 40 names.^[10,12] The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences (Women and Science) and Jean-François Martins, representative of the Eiffel Tower Operating Company.^{[11,12,13,14]}

Rose Dieng-Kuntz is the author of nine books and more than a hundred articles on artificial intelligence, knowledge management, ontology, the semantic web, conceptual graphs, and multi-agent systems.^[16,23] In 2000, she published Designing Cooperative Systems: The Use of Theories and Models and served as editor in collaboration with Heinz Jürgen Müller on Computational Conflicts: Conflict Modeling for Distributed Intelligent Systems (also titled Computer Conflicts: Conflict Modeling for Distributed Artificial Intelligence Systems). She also edited Knowledge Management and Organizational Memories in collaboration with Nada Mata, published in 2002 (ISBN 1461353181). In 2005, she authored Knowledge Management: Methods and Tools for Knowledge Management (also cited under the subtitle Méthodes et outils pour a gestion deas connaissances; ISBN 2100496352). She was also an editor, in collaboration with Parisa Ghodous (P. Ghodous) and Geilson Loureiro (G. Loureiro), of Leading the Web in Concurrent Engineering: Next Generation Concurrent Engineering (Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications), published in 2006 (ISBN 1586036513).