My name is Yohannes Kinfu. I come from one corner of Africa, and in that part of the world we have no so-called sir names/family names, each of us are known by our own given names. So, both formally and informally I prefer to be addressed by my ‘first’/given name, Yohannes.

I am a graduate of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. My trainning is in economics and demography.

Professionally, I am passionate about using statistics for monitoring what matters most to human beings: life and livelihoods. Specifically, my research interests are on the economics of health care and in the statistical and mathematical modelling of disease patterns, risk factors and population processes in global context.

As I do my day to day work, I focus on learning and have set out to achieve this through working collaboratively and travelling to distant places. I was fortunate enough to work across four continents (Africa, Australia, Europe and the Middle East) and in various institutional setups. To mention, but a few, I have served at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland overseeing the organization’s annual statistical publication, known as the World Health Statistics report, and then as a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland (UQ). Prior to those appointments, I was a Research Fellow at the Australian National University (ANU) and held other academic appointments in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa University), Ghana (University of Ghana) and South Africa (University of Kwa Zulu Natal).

In addition, at some stage of my career, I have also served as Head of the Urbanization and Wellbeing Research Program and as a Leader of the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance Site (NUHDSS) at the African Population and Health Research Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Currently, I am with the Faculty of Health, University of Canberra and serve as an affiliate Associate Professor at the Department of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington.  I also hold an Honorary Fellow position at Morduch Children Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia and serve as an Associate Professor of Population Medicine at the College of Medicine, Qatar University.

In my professional capacity, I serve as a member of the Scientific Council for the Global Burden of Disease at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, USA.

During my career, I have attracted funding amounting to over $4 million from various sources, including the Australian Research Council, Australian National Heart Foundation, Gates Foundation and others.  My work has been published widely in major medical and public health journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Lancet Global Health, Lancet HIV, JAMA Pediatrics, BMJ, the WHO Bulletin and others.