Senior Advisors

Dr. Ewnetu Firdawek Liyew is a senior public health professional and implementation scientist with over 18 years of experience in public health leadership, epidemiological research, programme management, and health systems strengthening. He currently serves as a Program Manager and consultant for the Geshiyaro Project, working with Imperial College, London, Simprints and the Ethiopian Public Health Institute.

Dr. Ewnetu has extensive experience leading large-scale, donor-funded public health programmes, particularly in neglected tropical diseases, digital health innovation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning and maternal-child health surveillance. His work on the Geshiyaro Project has contributed to advancing integrated approaches combining mass drug administration, water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH), behaviour change communication, and biometric-enabled digital tracking to support the control and elimination of soil-transmitted helminths and schistosomiasis.

He has authored more than 34 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has contributed to public health research, evidence generation, and programme implementation in Ethiopia and internationally. His broader professional experience includes academic leadership at Arba Minch and Addis Ababa universities, demographic surveillance research with the CDC, and health workforce evaluations with the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Dr. Ewnetu holds a PhD in Public Health from Addis Ababa University, an MPH, and a BSc in Nursing from Haramaya University.

Dr. Girma is a senior biostatistician with over 15 years of experience in academic research and clinical trials. His expertise covers study design, statistical analysis plan development, Bayesian adaptive methods, longitudinal and survival analysis, and statistical programming in SAS & R. He has worked across Phase I – III studies in oncology, immunology, cardiovascular, and central nervous system therapeutic areas at leading organizations in the USA, including Daiichi Sankyo, Allergan/AbbVie, the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, and Bristol-Myers Suibb, and has substantial experience managing research organizations and vendors to deliver high-quality results.

Dr. Girma has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, contributed to protocol development for new and supplemental drug indications, and supported submission deliverables and regulatory guideline application. His research interests include clinical trials design, public health, longitudinal data analysis, Bayesian data analysis, and survival data analysis.

Emeritus Full Professor of Quantitative Psychology at KU Leuven, Belgium, with over 170 international publications on clustering methods, multiway models, data fusion, and benchmarking. Former President of the International Federation of Classification Societies, Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Full Professor of Statistics at the University of Pretoria and former Director of the Biostatistics Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council. A leading authority on Bayesian spatial modeling, small-area estimation, and complex health survey analysis in sub-Saharan Africa, with over 120 peer-reviewed publications and served as Principal Investigator for major initiatives including the UN Global Index of Volunteer Engagement, and holds editorial roles with Biometrics and other international journals.