Dawit Getachew Assefa holds a Master of Science in Clinical Trials from Addis Ababa University and serves as a Clinical Trials Specialist and Lecturer at Dilla University, Ethiopia. He has also worked as a Professional Nurse at Dilla University Referral Hospital and Sekota District Health Center.

He has led a randomized trial on participant-centered adverse event surveillance following measles immunization in Ethiopia and contributed to multi-country TB prevention research with the KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

In 2024, Dawit was awarded the WHO/TDR Postgraduate Research Fellowship at the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO), and WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN), University of Oxford, where he led an epidemiological study on visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil using national surveillance data. He is also an Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx) Visiting Fellow, leading a project on trachoma among Ethiopian children using advanced analytical and machine learning methods.

His research focuses on poverty-related and neglected tropical diseases, particularly visceral leishmaniasis, trachoma, malaria, and tuberculosis. He has extensive experience in clinical research, epidemiology, and evidence synthesis, including IPD meta-analyses and systematic reviews. Through his academic and research work, Dawit aspires to strengthen clinical research capacity in low-resource settings and generate evidence that informs equitable health policies in Africa and beyond.