President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has appointed Professor Rohan Gunaratna to the post of Director General of the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS) with effect from 03rd May 2021.
Professor Rohan Gunaratna is a specialist in national security with expertise in counter terrorism. He is an Honorary Professor at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University, Sri Lanka and Senior Advisor to its Department of Defence and Strategic Studies. A former Senior Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Centre at the United States Military Academy at West Point and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, he served as an instructor and an advisor to the NYPD Intelligence Division and a consultant to Detainee Task Force 134 in Iraq and Joint Task Force (JTF) 435 in Afghanistan. He received his Masters from the University of Notre Dame in the US where he was Hesburgh Scholar and his doctorate from the University of St Andrews in the UK where he was British Chevening Scholar. For advancing international intelligence cooperation, Gunaratna received the Major General Ralph H. Van Deman Award.