Dr. Roberts received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1992. Prior to this, he worked in the Strategic Defense Initiative Office for two years and worked at NASA Langley on SCRAMJET concepts after defending his dissertation. He joined NC State University in 1994, where he rose through the academic ranks until leaving for KAUST in 2012. He was an early member of the Clean Combustion Research Center and became the Director in 2014. He is an NSF CAREERS and Army Research Office Young Investigator Award recipient, former chairperson of the Eastern States Section of the Combustion Institute and current vice-chair of the Saudi Section, current member of the AIAA Pressure Gain Combustion PC, and UC Berkeley Springer Professor. He has more than 100 archival publications and 135 conference papers.​