Mr Sofonyas Tiruneh

Sofonyas Tiruneh is an early-career Postgraduate Research Associate at the National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit (NPESU), the Centre for Big Data Research in Health (CBDRH) at UNSW Sydney, Australia. He is a PhD candidate at Monash University (awaiting conferral), and his doctoral thesis has been accepted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy without further amendments or examination. His PhD project aims to develop and validate an early pre-eclampsia risk prediction model using readily available maternal factors, to facilitate early identification of high-risk women for timely intervention and better pregnancy outcomes.

Sofonyas has expertise in clinical epidemiology with extensive experience in clinical prognostic models, advanced biostatistical methods using big data, and evidence synthesis, including systematic review and meta-analysis. His research focuses on the development, external validation, updating, and evaluation of clinical prediction models to improve women’s and perinatal health outcomes and support clinical decision-making. Furthermore, he has demonstrated the capacity to design and coordinate health research projects and has successfully led and collaborated on early-career-funded projects. His expertise extends to analysing electronic medical records (EMR), linked administrative health data, observational studies, and randomised controlled trial data analysis. 

His current and broader research interests include methodological research in clinical prediction model development, external validation and updating prediction models to improve personalised maternal care. He focuses on utilising big data, including individual participant data (IPD), to provide insights into the implementation of clinical prediction models in practice, using readily available predictors and applying classical regression and machine-learning approaches.