Cheikh Tidiane Diagne was trained at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse (France), where he earned a PhD in Structural and Functional Biology in 2013. His doctoral research focused on the dynamic analysis of the assembly of site-specific DNA recombination machinery using single-molecule techniques.

From 2014 to 2016, he served as a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Electronics and Information Technology (LETI) of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Grenoble (France). His research there focused on the use of bio-inspired technologies for molecular electronics.

Cheikh joined the Virology Department of the Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) in 2016 as an innovation researcher for diagnostics. His primary interests included global health innovation, specifically the development and evaluation of point-of-care diagnostic tools, digital health for the transport and biobanking of biological samples, and rapid extraction methods for nucleic acid amplification.

Since March 2020, he has led DIATROPIX, a social enterprise founded by the IPD, the Mérieux Foundation (France), the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (Geneva), and the Research Institute for Development (France). DIATROPIX is dedicated to the development and manufacturing of rapid diagnostic tests, primarily for neglected and epidemic diseases in Africa.