Marcelo Knobel was the Rector of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), in Brazil, an institution to which he has been a faculty member for 25 years. Prior to becoming Rector, Knobel held several leadership roles at Unicamp. He was the first Executive Director of the Unicamp Exploratory Science Museum and served as Vice-Rector for Undergraduate Programs, just to mention a few examples. Knobel held other important roles outside of Unicamp as well, including Vice-President of the Brazilian Physics Society and Executive Director of the Brazilian Nanotechnology National Laboratory (LNNano) at the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM).
Knobel is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (Elsevier), and he was Editor-In-Chief of Ciência & Cultura, a science and technology magazine published by the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC) for 10 years. He created a competitive research group in a few years, by obtaining grants to equip the laboratory, establishing international collaborations, and shaping the careers of many MSc and Ph.D. students. His field of research is magnetism and magnetic materials, mainly nanomagnetism and magnetotransport phenomena (giant magnetoresistance, giant magnetoimpedance). In his group, they produce and fully characterize structural and magnetic properties of novel nanostructured magnetic materials. Knobel has published more than 300 articles in refereed journals in magnetism and magnetic materials (with more than 11,900 citations, h-index 53). He has presented more than 80 invited seminars in several organizations, and more than 50 invited lectures at international conferences