As Director-General of Ethiopian Education and Research Network, Zelalem works with Ethiopian research and education institutions and other regional and global NRENs to embrace technology to improve research output and learning environments. In this role, Zelalem oversees the ICT related activities of the research and education sector of Ethiopia.
Zelalem originally joined the higher education sector in 2008 as a Network Engineer at Arbaminch University handling campus wide network expansion provide Enterprise application services.
Zelalem have more than 12 years of experience working in ICT sector as a network engineer, systems engineer, project manager, consultant for private sector, NGO and government organization. Zelalem is a founder and Director- General of Ethiopian Education and research network.
In 2010, he assumed a project manager for EthERNet network project connecting public higher education institutions to assist in improving the research output and quality of education separate from the commercial ISP. Zelalem was also part of member for different national initiative on various ICT related projects.
Other than Ethiopia, Zelalem had been working for value added distributors as a system engineer implementing various network and unified communication solutions for Telecoms, Banks, Gas & Oil companies, UN organizations etc. in Middle east and Africa including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Dubai, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda Djibouti, etc.
Currently Zelalem is a PhD final year student in Computer Science at University of South Africa. He holds his Bsc in Engineering and MSc in Computer Science. He holds various industry certification including CCNA, CCNP, CVE, VCNE, PMP, etc.
