NIPN Ethiopia Staff
Dr. Aregash Samuel is deputy director of the food science and nutrition research directorate of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI). She is also a coordinator for the NIPN project. In this capacity, she is responsible for coordinating the ongoing nutrition-related projects at EPHI. Dr. Aregash has been working in a different position (including director and team leader at EPHI). She also participated in different research activities as principal investigator (PI) and co-PI, authored and co-authored scientific papers.
She is also a member of the institutional review board (IRB) of EPHI. Currently, Dr. Aregash is also actively engaged in various projects including developing the National Nutrition Survey 2021. Before joining EPHI, Aregash was an accreditation expert at Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency (HERQA) and expert in curriculum development at Federal Ministry of Education of Ethiopia focusing on accreditation of higher education institutes in the different discipline at HREQA and designing curriculum for employable skills in technical vocational education and training. Dr. Aregash has a Ph.D. in Nutrition and Health Sciences from Wageningen University and Research (WUR), the Netherlands, and a MasterÔÇÖs degree in Food Science and Nutrition from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India. In her research works so far she supervised 8 mastersÔÇÖ students from WUR.
Meron Girma is a Nutritionist with 15 years of experience. She has a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences, from Oklahoma State University, US. Prior to joining NIPN, Meron worked as an Assistant Professor at Jimma University, as Graduate Research Assistant at Oklahoma State University and as a Lecturer at Hawassa University.
Her research work has focused on elucidating the functional consequences of vitamin and mineral deficiencies in women and children. Meron leads the policy analysis unit of NIPN. Meron is a Public Health Analyst in the NIPN project handling policy question formulation processes.
Alemayehu Hussen has a master's degree in Epidemiology & Biostatistics from the University of Gondar and BSc degree in statistics from Addis Ababa University. He worked as a Junior statistician in the Central statistics Agency for 2 years. He involved as a research supervisor at Addis Ababa University, school of public health in the performance monitoring and accountability 2020 (PMA2020), and in the reproductive health commodity security projects for 5 years. He also worked at Armaur Hannsen Research Institute (AHRI) as an assistant data manager.
Additionally, he worked in various organizations in different positions as a research assistant, data quality controller, Electronic data collection tool developer, field data collector, and supervisor in various studies and program evaluations (both qualitative and quantitative). He has developed experience in analyzing big data like Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and Household consumption and Expenditure Survey (HCES). Currently, he is working in the NIPN team in analyzing different national datasets to answer policy-relevant questions, guidelines development, and developing data management and analysis training materials for NIPN stakeholders.
Beza Teshome has BSc and MSc degree in public health. She used to work in clinical service at St. Peter TB Specialized hospital for four years. In 2016, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute initially hired her as a data manager in health system research directorate. Following this,the food science and nutrition research directorate (FSNRD) hired her as a researcher in 2017. In the past three years, she is involved in analyzing data and writing reports of various research surveys conducted in the FSNRD. She has been working with the NIPN team from its establishment and now in data repository designing, policy question formulation and flyers preparation, using Household Income, consumption and expenditure survey data for analysis.
Hassina Ousman has MA in documentary linguistics and culture from Addis Ababa University. She also holds a BA in English language and literature from AAU. She worked as a senior TV and radio reporter and program producer in Amhara mass media and Walta Information Center for 8 years. She also worked in various positions in different non-governmental and business companies, such as Ethiopian Red Cross Society, Chadet, and Kifiya financial technology PLC, as a communication specialist for six years.
She joined the NIPN team in August 2018 as a communication officer. She is now handling different tasks in organizing events, training, workshops, seminars. She works on News, e-Newsletters, brochures. Additionally, she photographed events and designed e-Newsletters and banners. She also runs and administers the NIPN website and social media accounts.
Mussie Sewnet has professional capacities in monitoring and evaluation of project activities in different governmental and non-governmental organizations since 2009. Mussie holds MSc in Food Security & Development Studies, MA in Social Work and BA in Development Management. He has short term trainings in the area of project management and contributed a lot in successive achievement of project activities.
Mussie is responsible to design the NIPN M&E framework and lead quantitative and qualitative monitoring, evaluation and assessment of NIPN activities and outputs. He contributes to the lessons learnt, best practices, program data, evaluations and other information to share with NIPN stakeholders in Ethiopia for influencing decision makers about improving nutrition.
He also involved in analysing data and writing reports for different studies conducted in the NIPN, preparing data sharing code of conduct for food science and nutrition research directorate (FSNRD) and, involved in the data repository design, nutrition data landscape/mapping and involved in all data mapping activities including report writing, data documentation and Metadata.
Mr. Andinet Abera is a researcher at Food Science and Nutrition Research Directorate (FSNRD) of Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) since 2010, where he coordinated food science and technology research team under FSNRD from 2014 to 2018 and led a number of nutrition researches including impact evaluation of multisectoral government nutrition initiative called Seqota Declaration. He has also involved in National Micronutrient survey, National Food consumption survey and currently member of National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPN) team and leading Fill the Nutrient Gap project in Ethiopia in collaboration with World Food Programme.
Andinet has obtained Bsc degree in Applied chemistry from University of Gondar in 2008 and Msc degree in Food Science and Nutrition from Addis Ababa University. He has published peer reviewed articles independently and with a team of researchers. Among his works are nutritional benefits of underutilized vegetables in gumuz community in Benishangul gumuz region and also co-authored a number of scientific articles in multisectoral implementation of nutrition interventions in Ethiopia specifically exploring Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia (SURE) programme. Andinet is assisting the NIPN staff in different assignments.
