Professor David Knowles FREng is the CEO of the Henry Royce Institute.
David is also a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Director (Engineering) of South West Hub at the University of Bristol. He is a specialist in material structural integrity of materials from extended roles in industry and academia covering sectors including nuclear, renewables, oil and gas, aerospace and transport. He has held academic roles at Universities of Cambridge and Bristol and worked across Asia, Europe and the UK, with both SMEs and large companies including Shell and Atkins.
He has extensive knowledge and experience in materials selection and structural integrity/life assessment of industrial pressure equipment and rotating plant. Specifically he has internationally recognised expertise in failure assessment, fitness for service and environmental/thermal degradation of materials in the energy sector.
David has published over 100 papers in journals and invited conferences, given numerous workshops and courses on materials selection, high temperature life assessment, materials degradation and constitutive modelling and acted as an expert witness in a number of large legal cases.
Whilst at Atkins and the University of Bristol David has worked on integrity assessment, materials selection, fabrication specifications and corrosion protection of Advance Gas Nuclear Reactors, subsea tanks, pipelines, offshore wind turbine foundations, offshore platforms and nuclear graphite cores.
