She received her PhD from Free University Berlin, Germany. Her research area is in algorithms and data structures, in particular geometric algorithms and shape matching. She has 40 peer-reviewed publications, 22 with students, and she is actively involved in several applied projects including topics in biomedical areas and in intelligent transportation systems. She is the principal investigator on a $1.9M NIH grant funding the Computational Systems Biology Core Facility at UTSA. Dr. Wenk won an NSF CAREER award as well as research, teaching, and service awards at UTSA. She is actively involved in service to the university, including serving as the Chair of the Faculty Senate and as the Faculty Advisor for two student organizations.