Brig Gen Ferenc Molnár PhD is the Head of Department for Planning and Coordination at the Ministry of Defence and the member of the Doctoral School of Military Sciences at the National University of Public Service (NUPS) and of the Public Body of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA).
From mid-August 2020, for a term of three years, he will perform the duties as the head of the Academic Planning and Policy Division at the NATO Defence College in Rome, in connection with which he was appointed brigadier general with effect from 15th August, 2020.
Colonel Molnár conducted educational and research activity for almost twenty years, he is the author of about one hundred publications, he was participant and/or leader of several Hungarian and international scientific research. During his academic career, he received the MTA Bolyai-scholarship, the NATO-CNR Senior Researcher scholarship (Rome, CeMISS), and the Western European Union ISS scholarship (London, RIIA).
He lectures regularly in the areas of military sociology, security policy and civil-military relations.
He graduated from the Kossuth Lajos Military College (KLKF) in 1987 as a mechanised infantry officer, and then he obtained degrees in sociology from the ELTE in 1993 and in security policy from NPS, USA in 2002. After receiving the PhD at the Zrínyi Miklós University of National Defence (ZMNE) in 1999, he obtained his habitation in 2004.
Prior his career at the Ministry of Defence, he held positions as a military trainer, a teacher, a researcher, then for four years he was a faculty advisor at the NATO Defence College in Rome. In 2011 he was a deputy director development at ISAF HQ in Kabul, and chief-of-staff in 2015 at NATO HQ, Sarajevo.