Nipuna Weeratunge successfully defended his PhD at NTNU Gjøvik

Interview by Guttorm Sindre, 14 August 2026

On 14th August 2026, Nipuna Weeratunge successfully defended his PhD thesis "Game-based Information Security Education: Perspective, Context, and Guidance" at NTNU Gjøvik. The committee who evaluated the thesis consisted of Senior Lecturer Adam Palmquist, Mälardalen University, Sweden as first opponent, Associate Professor Fredrik Breien, University of Bergen, Norway as second opponent, and Professor Deepti Mishra, NTNU, as the internal member and administrator of the committee. The main supervisor for the thesis has been Rune Hjelsvold, leader of Excited Cluster 1. We made a little interview with Nipuna after the defence. 

- How do you feel now after the successful defence of your thesis?

- Happy and accomplished. There's also a bit of a void now that I no longer have that one overarching goal driving me forward, though my current academic work is keeping me busy enough to fill the gap.

Were you nervous before the defence?

- Yes, quite nervous, but mainly up until the discussion actually began. Once we got into it, the nerves settled, and the discussion started flowing really well.

- Did the opponents have any surprising questions or discussion points, or were they mostly expected ones?

- A few were expected, but most were genuinely new to me. I'm grateful to the opponents for pushing the discussion in directions I hadn't anticipated; it made for a really good scholarly exchange.

- What do you see as the most significant contribution of your thesis?

- I'd say the biggest contribution is the unified taxonomy for classifying and analyzing game-based InfoSec education approaches and beyond, tested against 57 educational games and then applied through a scoping review across 230 studies to map trends, target audiences, design strategies, and evaluation practices in the field. It gives the field, and game-based learning in general, a shared, structured way to compare and analyze educational games, which was largely missing before.

Coming in second is TXG (The XSS Game) itself , the empirical work where I put multi-opposing-role gameplay, narrative-based simulation, and structured in-game feedback into practice and evaluated how they actually affected learning, motivation, and engagement around Cross-site Scripting concepts. It's what grounded the more conceptual work in real classroom application.
 
- What are your plans and ambitions for the future now after your successful thesis defence?

- I'm currently working as an assistant professor at NTNU, and following the PhD defence, I'll be moving into an associate professor position, which I'll hold for at least the next year. Beyond that, I honestly don't know yet whether I'll stay in academia or move into industry, but I have some time to figure it out.

We warmly congratulate Nipuna on completing hir PhD and wish him all the best in the future!

Photo: Shrabanti Kundu