Sarah Wakes
English New Zealand engineer and academic
Sarah Jane Wakes is an English-born New Zealand applied mathematician and engineer, and is a full professor at the University of Otago. She is the first woman to be head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the university.
Academic career
Wakes was born in England. Wakes completed a PhD titled The development of a sand wave at the University of Nottingham in 1991. Wakes was a chartered engineer and marine engineer in the UK, and through the UK Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology is also a chartered engineer in New Zealand. Wakes joined the University of Otago in 2002, initially in the design department, then in applied sciences. Wakes has also been the director of the university's Clothing and Textile Sciences programme. In 2021 Wakes was appointed as the head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. She was the first woman to lead the department in the university's 150-year history. Wakes was appointed a full professor in 2024, and as of 2024 is a member of the university Senate.
“Sarah Wakes” enters the record as english New Zealand engineer and academic. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sarah, Wakes and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q77324264. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2002, 2021 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sarah Wakes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.