Dean’s Message

General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) strives to strengthen the research landscape of the institution in particular and of the country in general. In this endeavor, KDU has pioneered in the state university system of the country in establishing the position of Den of research and Development with a view to promoting research in a systemic manner at the institutional level. Research at KDU stands for publications in high impact journals, establishing collaborations with local and foreign research groups/ institutes and commercialization of research. Accordingly, KDU staff is encouraged to engage in research by offering them multifaceted incentives such as short-term and long-term research grants, travel grants for participating international conferences, remunerations for publications in high impact open access journals, and introduction of a Research Excellence Award.
KDU always encourages research collaborations with reputed external researchers and institutions. The KDU has provided open access to resources for research by establishing state of the art laboratory facilities, such the Biomedical Research Laboratories at the Faculty of Medicine, Wind Tunnel and 24×7 Research Lab at the Faculty of Engineering, and a High-end Computer Modeling and Simulation Lab at the Faculty of Computing. To facilitate commercialization of research through establishing public-private partnerships as well as collaborations with other the state sector institutes, KDU has established its Institute for Combinatorial Advanced Research and Education (KDU-CARE). KDU-CARE aims to support the academics at KDU to commercialize their research findings by bridging the gap between the academia and the industry, and to provide solutions to current problems in private or state sector institutes through research and counselling services.
KDU aims to promote multi-disciplinary research cutting across variety of disciplines including engineering, medicine, computing, allied health sciences, management, law, social sciences, and defence studies. KDU has recognized research as yet another lucrative dimension for building the national economy. As such research at KDU spans from fundamental research to discovery and inventions leading to innovation for the generation of foreign earnings for the nation.

Dean, Research and Development
Prof Charitha L. Goonasekara
BSc (Col), PhD (Can), Post-doc (Can)
Professor, Department of Preclinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, KDU
0910219453 / 0112635268 Ext277
deanrad@kdu.ac.lk