Addisu Taddese was born in Jimma, Ethiopia. When he was 10, he moved to the capital city of Ethiopia--Addis Ababa, where he went to high school at Saint Joseph High School. After high school, he joined the University of Evansville and graduated Suma Cum Laude with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and minors in Computer Science and Mathematics in 2008. While he was in college, he was involved in several activities including IEEE, ACM, and HKN. He was also involved in the Student Christian Fellowship and Kappa Chi, where he served as a Chaplain.

Addisu participated in the Autonomous Lawn Mower Project while in college and his senior project was to design and build an autonomous robot for the IEEE SoutheastCon Student Hardware Competition. The robot was to collect valuable minerals (designated as wooden blocks with different colors and RFID tags) from the moon (simulated as a playing field with different areas with varying roughness).

Addisu started professional work as an intern at Vectren Corporation. After working for a year, he joined Ciholas as design intern and continued full time after graduating from college.

Addisu married Andrea Taddese right after graduating from college. His hobbies include developing websites, cooking, playing tennis, and basketball.