Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday appointed Dr Moeed W. Yusuf as the special assistant to the prime minister on national security division and strategic policy planning, a notification issued by the Cabinet Division said.

He will hold the status of minister of state, according to the notification.

Yusuf was formerly the associate vice president of the Asia centre at the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC.

In September, he was appointed as the chairperson of the Strategic Policy Planning Cell (SPPC), which functions under the Pakistani government's National Security Division. The cell is based in the Prime Minister’s Office and has been tasked with providing input on issues that fall under the National Security Committee’s mandate.

The author of Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: US Crisis Management in South Asia, Yusuf has taught at Boston University, George Washington University, and Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He is also a columnist for daily Dawn.

Yusuf holds a Masters in international relations and a PhD in political science from Boston University.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Yusuf before joining the USIP was a fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Centre at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and concurrently a research fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Centre at Harvard Kennedy School.

He has also worked at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

In 2007, Yusuf co-founded Strategic and Economic Policy Research, a private sector consultancy firm in Pakistan.

He has also consulted for the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and the Stockholm Policy Research Institute, among others.

Between 2004 and 2007, Yusuf was a full-time consultant with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad, according to his profile.