Dr Mitiku HAMBISA

Dr Mitiku Hambisa is an Epidemiologist and Public Health expert. He is a Senior Research Associate at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a Conjoint Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia. He completed his PhD in Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Statistics from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Dr Hambisa completed a Master of Public Health Degree (MPH) in Epidemiology from Addis Ababa University, a Postgraduate Diploma in higher education teaching from Haramaya University, and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health (B.Sc.) from Jimma University, Ethiopia.

He researches healthy ageing, healthy and working life expectancies, chronic diseases, infectious diseases, particularly Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), mother-to-child HIV prevention, and health services utilisation. Mitiku’s PhD project examined “healthy ageing and health care utilisation among Australian women using ‘driving’ as an operational indicator of ageing well” using the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) data, the largest long-running project in Australia.

Dr Hambisa has published 22 high-quality research papers (7 as a first author) in high-ranked journals, which received 6,444 citations (h-index=13, i10-index=16) as of October 2022. Before joining PhD program, Dr. Hambisa worked as an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, lecturer, and researcher teaching different courses, including epidemiology, research methods in health, biostatistics, and communicable disease control for undergraduate students at the College of Health and Medical Sciences, Haramaya University, Ethiopia. He has over ten years of research and academic experience in Ethiopia. His research skills include but are not limited to longitudinal data analysis, generalised estimating equation modelling (GEE), statistical model building, logistic regression, survival analysis, and using different statistical software packages (SAS, SPSS, and Epi-data).

Besides his regular teaching and research duties, he has been involved in different academic and administrative responsibilities, including serving as associate registrar, coordinator of research and publication office, secretary of staff promotion committee, mentor of masters of Field Epidemiology students, and supervisor in the community-based team training program of undergraduate students at his previous institution. He was also a national (Ethiopia) trainer of trainers for the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV/AIDS, and he has practised experience in training healthcare workers to support reproductive-age women living with HIV to minimise the risk of HIV transmission to their child during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.