Abebaw is Head of the Africa Centre of Excellence for medical discovery & clinical trials (CDT-Africa) and co-director of the WHO collaborating centre for mental health research and capacity building at the College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University. CDT-Africa is responsible for regional capacity building in medical product development with focus on neglected tropical diseases and health care delivery innovations. Abebaw is also an African Research Leader (supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and DfID, UK), Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has published over 150 peer reviewed articles.

He serves or has served in various national and international panels including Lancet Commissions, WHO, the UK Medical Research Council and the US Institute of Medicine. Abebaw is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Addis Ababa University and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Sussex (since March 2017) and King’s College London (since March 2019).

Abebaw graduated in Medicine from Addis Ababa University and trained in Clinical Psychiatry and Psychopharmacology in the United Kingdom. His research interests are in clinical trials, complex interventions, mood disorders and knowledge translation. When he has ‘time to spare’, he likes to watch football (English soccer) and play a local musical instrument (Kirar).  

Prof. Yimtubezinash Woldeamanuel Mulate , MD, M.Sc., PhD, is currently works in the Department of the Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology at the Addis Ababa University (AAU) School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences. She is a consultant Medical Specialist (Medical Microbiologist) and has 20 years of experience in teaching, research, and mentoring. After serving as a general practitioner in several Hospitals in the country, she did her M.Sc. and later her PhD in Medical Microbiology. She has supervised/ mentored more than 70 graduate students in MSc and PhD programs at Addis Ababa University. She has a diverse background in infectious disease research, mainly focusing on the diagnosis of infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, including tuberculosis and has published more than 65 peer reviewed articles and numerous abstracts. She has received several certificates of appreciations and recognitions. She was awarded the best female research at AAU in 2016. She has served as Head of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology for two terms. She has contributed to the capacity building of research ethics review at Institutional and National level as well as other African countries. She has served as Executive Board member of Pan-African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN) and coordinator for the PABIN/SIDCER Ethics Committee recognition program and has led Ethics Committee performance assessment surveys in several countries in Africa. She serves in National and International Advisory Boards and various committees. She was the Chair of the Institutional Review Board of College of Health Sciences for five years, and currently is the Co-Chair of the IRB of the College of Health Sciences at AAU, including the research ethics committee at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute(AHRI). She is involved in several international collaborative researches, among which is the CDT-Africa and currently is Lead of the incubation hub of the center. She is a fellow and Executive Board member of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.