After completing my Master of Science degree in Biology from Addis Ababa University, I joined the Department of Drug Research of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), formerly called the Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute (EHNRI) as a research associate of biomedical sciences. I was involved in evaluating and validating the efficacy, safety, and quality of traditionally claimed natural products of predominantly plant origin against a wide array of infectious and non-infectious diseases using animal and in vitro models.

I joined the Department of Zoological Sciences, Addis Ababa University (AAU) as a Ph.D. fellow of Medical Entomology, where I studied the spatial ecology of malaria and the impact of mass trapping of malaria vectors using novel odor-baited traps on malaria transmission intensity in southern Ethiopia. My Ph.D. project was a collaborative project between the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and AAU under the supervision of Professor Rickard Ignell, Dr. Sharon Hill of SLU, Professor Richard Hopkins of the University of  Greenwich, and Dr. Habte Tekie and Dr. Sisay Dugassa of AAU. Following the completion of my Ph.D. study, I returned to my home institute, EPHI, and resumed my work as a researcher and chair of the Public Health Entomology Research Unit.

I had two and half years of postdoctoral training in Professor Rickard’s lab in Sweden, where I studied the floral preference of wild-caught malaria vectors and how infection with Plasmodium parasites influences plant host choice in the vectors using molecular and biochemical approaches.

Very recently, I joined Professor Luckhart’s lab at the University of Idaho as a postdoctoral scholar to study the influence of genetic and biochemical manipulations of the pantothenate kinase (PanK) pathway in mosquitoes on the biology of Plasmodium species in different model organisms.