Dr Yohannes Melaku

Dr Yohannes Adama Melaku is a nutritional epidemiologist with advanced expertise in causal inference. He leads a research program on nutrition and epidemiology within the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI). He is the Senior Lead of the FHMRI Population Health Flagship Program (Sleep and Nutrition). He currently holds an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellowship (EL1) and serves as a Senior Research Fellow at Flinders University, with adjunct appointments at the University of Adelaide and a visiting fellowship at Qatar University.

Dr Melaku’s research focuses on understanding how dietary patterns affect chronic conditions, including cardiometabolic diseases. By integrating causal inference and machine learning methods into large-scale epidemiological datasets, his work addresses major analytical challenges in nutritional epidemiology and informs policy and intervention strategies. His projects span Australia, the US, the UK, China, Ethiopia, and, most recently, Qatar, with international collaborations using data from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial, UK Biobank, and the Global Burden of Disease Study.

An internationally recognised researcher, Dr Melaku has authored more than 127 peer-reviewed publications in leading medical, public health, and nutrition journals, including The Lancet, JAMA, BMC Medicine, IJBNPA, Clinical Nutrition, and Current Nutrition Reports. His research has been supported by multiple national grants, including the NHMRC and the Jack Brockhoff Foundation. His work has informed national and international nutritional public health policy, including the 2023 Mitchell Institute Policy Evidence Review and National Nutrition Policy Review of the Ethiopian Government.

Dr Melaku is deeply committed to mentoring and capacity building, having supervised, co-supervised and mentored 10 PhD and 12 master’s students in Australia and Ethiopia. He regularly delivers short courses and workshops on causal inference, nutritional epidemiology, and advanced statistical methods. His leadership in the field has been recognised through local, national and international awards, editorial board roles, and presentations at over 40 national and international conferences. He is also frequently invited to review manuscripts for leading journals and grants for major funding bodies, including the NHMRC and UK MRC.

Through his research leadership, collaborations across continents, and dedication to evidence translation, Dr Melaku continues to advance the science of nutrition, contributing to global efforts to improve population health and well-being.