AAU conducted a welcoming and orientation session for the 1st cohort of MSc in Public Health Data Science students. The session started with welcoming speech by Dr. Rahel Bekele who have gone through the project objectives, achievements and milestones completed so far. She has also explained the courses and activities in the program.
Dr. Wondwossen Mulugeta, project team member and currently the Vice President for Institutional Developmnent also gave his expert advice on what is expected of students as well has how best they can make use of the program
Prof. Belay Simane added the importance of collaboration and engagement with partner institutions for data sharing and internship. He provided guidance on how they should engage in their academic and research activities. 

​Addis Ababa University is proud to announce the launch of its M.Sc program in Public Health Data Science (PHDS) with the first cohort of 30 regular program students selected from more than 300 applicants.  Because of the large number of applicants, it has also opened an extension program with another cohort of 30 students.
The major purpose of the program is to equip graduates with the knowledge and skills to employ cutting-edge data science tools and advance effective solutions to pressing public health issues.  As such the graduates are expected to apply machine learning tools and techniques to reveal features of large, complex health-related datasets.
The program is hosted by the School of Information Science an is run in collaboration with the School of Public Health, Department of Statistics, and College of Development Studies at AAU. We are also privileged to partner with Columbia University (USA) and the University of Nairobi (Kenya) in this M.Sc program.   As you are well aware this program will be opened as part of our project entitled “Advancing Public Health Research in Eastern Africa (APHREA-DST)”, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH).
The first cohort of students have come from a diverse set of backgrounds. The statistics is presented below.