Dr Tolesa Bekele Okuba (PhD) is a young Public Health, Data Scientist and Epidemiologist trained in Australia (University of New South Wales) and in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa University). He has had several experiences in research and academic roles over the last 11 years. Dr Tolesa authored and co-authored several research proposals on HIV, Tuberculosis, family planning, nutrition, environmental determinants and occupational hazard exposure, gender-based and sexual violence, substance use and non-communicable diseases and published more than 25 scientific papers. He is collaborating with multi-disciplinary scientists at the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) and Local Burden of Diseases (LBD) studies as well as co-authoring several articles.

Originally from Ethiopia, Dr Tolesa worked as Assistant Professor at Madda Walabu and Ambo Universities in Ethiopia. He led academic programs at Madda Walabu University and postgraduate programs at Ambo University. Also, he served as Research Ethical Review Committee member at Madda Walabu University and facilitated several training workshops. From 2018 to 2022, he was a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Dr Tolesa is a life member of the Ethiopian Public Health Association (EPHA). He collaborated with the COVID-19 response team at NSW Health in early 2021. From May to December 2022, he worked as a casual academic (tutoring Epidemiology and Biostatistics) at UNSW. Since January 2023 to present he is working as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science (CHRIS) within the Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI) in the Macquarie University.

His research interests such as healthcare innovations, cancer epidemiology, health outcomes inequality, modelling of infectious diseases, climate change and human health, interventions for tackling nutrition problems and many others.