Daniel Yilma is a medical doctor that holds an Internal Medicine fellowship from Jimma University, Ethiopia, where he has been teaching since 2009. He also provides clinical services mainly in infectious diseases in Jimma University Hospital.

He worked in nutritional trials in HIV positive people in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia with collaboration that started with University of Copenhagen where he also obtained his PhD. He established a clinical trial unit In Jimma University and conducted Phase II and III malaria drug trials as principal investigator in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline and Medicines for Malaria Venture.

He coordinated the validation of point of care test for glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase in Ethiopia with PATH, USA.

Daniel joined IDDO/WWARN as a WHO/TDR fellow in 2020 within the South Africa center at UCT, South Africa and Asia-Pacific Regional Centre - at Menzies school of health research  Australia , where he worked on the safety of primaquine in P. falciparum and P. vivax malaria treatment. He is now continuing this research as a UCT post-doctoral fellow within the Southern African Centre of IDDO based at the UCT Collaborating Centre for Optimising Antimalarial Therapy, and working with WWARN collaborators to find effective and simplified malaria treatment and diagnostic tools.