Wenk is originally from Berlin.[2] She earned a diploma in mathematics in 1998 at the Free University of Berlin with the thesis Algorithmen für das Crossdating in der Dendrochronologie (Algorithms for Crossdating in Dendrochronology) supervised by Helmut Alt.[5] She continued to work with Alt at the Free University of Berlin and in 2002 completed a doctorate in computer science (Dr. rer. nat.) with the dissertation Shape Matching in Higher Dimensions.[5][6]
After postdoctoral research with Alon Efrat at the University of Arizona,[5][7] Wenk joined the faculty at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2004.[5][3] She chaired the faculty senate of the university from 2010 to 2012.[5] As faculty senate chair, she oversaw a change in the university grading system to allow plus and minus modifiers in letter grades,[8] and a policy to reduce the use of paper by making all campus printers and copiers double-sided.[9]
She moved to Tulane University in 2012,[5][2] and was promoted to full professor in 2017. At Tulane, she also holds an adjunct position in the mathematics department.[5]
Book
With Mahmuda Ahmed, Sophia Karagiorgou, and Dieter Pfoser, Wenk is the co-author of the book Map Construction Algorithms (Springer, 2015).[2]
