Yitna Firdyiwek joined the Teaching Resource Center as a Faculty Consultant (Instructional Technology) on a part-time basis in 2009. He is currently also Instructional Technology Advisor for ITC's Advanced Technology Group. Yitna is a native of Ethiopia. He has lived in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East before settling as a naturalized citizen in the United States. He has a Masters in Creative Writing from Brown University, a Masters in Linguistics from George Mason, and a Ph.D. in Instructional Technology from the Curry School of Education.

For the past ten years, Yitna has worked at the University advising faculty with advanced technology integration projects in undergraduate education. He has developed tools for web-database integration, multimedia management, and course management systems. More recently, he has been involved in the implementation and rollout of UVaCollab, the course management system at the University. He is also working on implementation of the Open Source Portfolio (OSP) system for UVaCollab.