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Dr

Tolassa W Ushula

(He/His)

Executive Dean of Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

Faculty of Health/School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences/Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition

Orcid identifier0000-0001-6690-3489
  • Executive Dean of Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
    Faculty of Health/School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences/Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition
  • +61 3 924 45779 (Work)
  • Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria 3125

BIO

Dr Tolassa Ushula is a Nutritional and Life-course Cardiovascular Epidemiologist trained in Ethiopia and Australia. Dr Ushula currently holds a 2-year fixed term prestigious Deakin University Executive Dean of Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow position at the Institute of Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN), VIC, Australia. In his current role, Dr Ushula is leading a project that aims to evaluate the global, regional and national burden of diseases linked to dietary share of ultra-processed foods in Healthy and Sustainable Food group led by Prof Mark Lawrence. Dr Ushula's project is a multi-disciplinary multi-institute and multi-nation collaborative research with GBD team at IHME, University of Washington and Prof. Carlos Monteiro and his team in Brazil at University of São Paulo to guide public health policy response and clinical practice.

Dr Ushula completed his PhD from the University of Queensland in 2023. His PhD thesis examined dietary patterns and the development of cardiometabolic risk profiles in you adults over the life course using large and complex data from the Mater University of Queensland Study of pregnancy (MUSP) birth cohort study. During and after completing his PhD, he worked as a Senior Research Assistant/Postdoctoral Researcher at UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health on different projects including co-leading systematic review to produce evidence on strategies to prevent and manage T2DM in young Indigenous people and leading several research papers on the impact of maternal pregnancy complications (HDP and excessive GWG) on maternal adiposity and multimorbidity over the life course, as well as offspring cardiometabolic risk profiles using data pooled from same cohort study as for my PhD studies at the University of Queensland.

With a background in clinical and nutrition sciences, Dr Ushula has dedicated much of his academic career conducting public health research with a primary focus on nutritional epidemiology applying some advanced epidemiological concepts to the nutrition data. Dr Ushula's overarching goal is to leverage his current role and research endeavours to foster the development of evidence-based population centred nutritional interventions to guide food and nutrition policies and clinical practice, thereby preventing the burden of diet-related NCDs. Dr Ushula is also enthusiastic developing personalised nutrition interventions to complement population cantered intervention for better dietary practices and health outcomes.

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY CURRENT APPOINTMENT

  • Executive Dean of Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
    Deakin University, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences

FIELDS OF RESEARCH (2020)

  • Nutritional epidemiology
  • Cardiology (incl. cardiovascular diseases)

AREA/FACULTY

  • Faculty of Health

DEPARTMENT/SCHOOL/INSTITUTE

  • School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences

STRATEGIC RESEARCH AND INNOVATION CENTRE

  • Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition