Professor Robert J K Wood founded the UK National Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS) within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.

Professor Robert Wood is Professor of Surface Engineering and Tribology within Engineering Sciences of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton and has 30 years research experience in the field of tribology and surface engineering. He has spent several years at BP Research researching into erosion and corrosion resistant coatings but returned to Southampton in 1993 to re-establish surface engineering/tribology research. His group was awarded an EPSRC S&I award in 2008 (£10M) to create the National Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS) and was awarded a further £3M for research into Green Tribology under a platform Grant from EPSRC. He is currently PI of a collaborative EPSRC funded project looking at early wear detection using array sensors and machine learning algorithms for anomaly and outlier detection for condition monitoring of mechanical systems.

Professor Robert Wood has research interests in rain, cavitation and solid particle erosion, erosion-corrosion interactions and modelling; tribological and multifunctional coating design and performance, biomimetic coatings for anti-fouling; electrochemical control of interfacial friction; particle modelling in pipe bends by swirl dispersion of particles. He has been involved in working on erosion of helicopter blades, nuclear slurry handling systems at Sellafield, reverse thrust actuators on aero engines, polymer coatings for potable water systems as well as offshore choke valves. He has teaching experience in Surface Engineering, Tribological Engineering and Fluid Mechanics at Undergraduate and MSc level.