Dr. Tolesa Okuba

Biography

Tolesa Bekele Okuba, PhD, is a Public Health and Data Scientist who specializes in Epidemiology. She was trained in Australia at the University of New South Wales and in Ethiopia at Addis Ababa University. With over 11 years of experience in academic research roles, Tolesa has authored and co-authored numerous research proposals focusing on HIV, Tuberculosis, family planning, nutrition, environmental determinants of health, gender-based violence, and non-communicable diseases. She has published more than 25 scientific papers and has collaborated with multidisciplinary scientists on Global Burden Diseases and Local Burden Diseases studies. Originally from Ethiopia, she previously worked as an Assistant Professor at Madda Walabu University where she led postgraduate academic programs. Tolesa served as a member of the Research Ethical Review Committee at Madda Walabu University and facilitated various training workshops. She played a significant role in the COVID-19 response team for NSW Health in early 2021. In December 2022, she worked as a casual academic tutoring in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UNSW. Since January 2023, she has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science (CHRIS) at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. Her research interests include healthcare innovations, cancer epidemiology, health outcomes inequality, infectious disease modeling, and interventions addressing nutrition issues.

Research Interests

Experience