Abebaw is Head of the Africa Centre of Excellence for medical discovery & clinical trials (CDT-Africa) and co-director of the WHO collaborating centre for mental health research and capacity building at the College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University. CDT-Africa is responsible for regional capacity building in medical product development with focus on neglected tropical diseases and health care delivery innovations. Abebaw is also an African Research Leader (supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and DfID, UK), Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has published over 150 peer reviewed articles.

He serves or has served in various national and international panels including Lancet Commissions, WHO, the UK Medical Research Council and the US Institute of Medicine. Abebaw is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Addis Ababa University and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Sussex (since March 2017) and King’s College London (since March 2019).

Abebaw graduated in Medicine from Addis Ababa University and trained in Clinical Psychiatry and Psychopharmacology in the United Kingdom. His research interests are in clinical trials, complex interventions, mood disorders and knowledge translation. When he has ‘time to spare’, he likes to watch football (English soccer) and play a local musical instrument (Kirar).