Prof Knutsen graduated with a PhD in Materials Engineering at UCT in 1989 and became the inaugural director of the UCT Centre for Materials Engineering in 2000.  He joined the Mechanical Engineering Department in the same year and served as Department Head for the period 2013-2018.  His research interests lie in the microstructure-property relationships of metallic materials with current interests particularly directed at titanium alloys and power plant steels.  Advanced materials characterisation is critical in these studies and Robert continues to make extensive use of SEM-Based electron backscattered diffraction, a technique that he introduced to South Africa as far back as 1994.