About

Mathematics

I studied Mathematics at Addis Ababa University, and it’s a subject that stays close to my heart — I’ll always be a mathematician first. I count myself lucky to work on two of mathematics’ most consequential applications in technology: cryptography and artificial intelligence.

Cybersecurity

I trained in cybersecurity in Israel, covering malware analysis, network packet analysis, OSINT, and attack/defense drills. I began my career in the cryptology research department of INSA, the Ethiopian equivalent of the NSA.

AI

AI is what I do day to day now. I lead a small team applying AI to cybersecurity problems — audio and video deepfake detection, image-based malware detection, acoustic side-channel analysis on keyboards, and Amharic sentiment analysis with encrypted inference, among others. I’m especially interested in model compression, explainability, and what NLP can do for under-resourced languages like Amharic.

Now

I head the Emerging Technologies Division at INSA, where I lead the National Blockchain Platform project, participate in a quantum computing study, mentor junior researchers at the INSA talent center, and serve on the National AI for Health technical working committee.