Fad Seydou is Malian, originally from Gao region. He grew up in Niamey, Niger, where he spent the first 16 years of his life, and attended primary and junior High school. He then did his secondary studies at the regional high school of Gao from 1985 to 1988 (exact sciences series).

After the baccalauréat in 1988, he received a scholarship from the Malian government for mathematics studies at Lomonosov University in Moscow. He left Moscow in 1991 to move to Finland where he began studying the Finnish language before continuing his studies in mathematics at the mathematics department of the University of Oulu in 1992. He obtained the degree of Master of Science in mathematics in March 1994. He was immediately selected for post-graduate studies at the same university. For these studies he did a specialization in Mathematics in Industry at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands (1994-1995) with a scholarship from the European Commission. Afterwards, he obtained a scholarship from the Finnish Academy to write a PhD thesis at the University of Delaware, USA. After the PhD in 1997, he was hired as researcher at the University of Oulu in the Department of Mathematics. He left this Department in 2000 to join the Department of Electrical Engineering. At the same time, he had worked in a few universities as a researcher: (i) at the University of Kuopio in Finland (from 1998 to 2000); (ii) at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA (2001-2006); and (iii) at the University of Waterloo in Canada (in 2006). F. Seydou is the author or co-author of more than 70 scientific articles.

Seydou has been, as a consultant, author of more than 60 studies and evaluation reports for many national and international institutions.