Royce came to Princeton in 1960 as a research associate and lecturer and has been 
a member of the faculty since 1961. He has taught courses on topics including materials science, thermodynamics and mechanics. He also co-developed a class on “The Engineer and the Bicycle” to explore the human power plant, aerodynamic and materials issues and design, and he has led a freshman seminar on “Power From the People” to examine human-powered transportation. These courses, together with “The Structure and Properties of Engineering Materials,” were fully available to students as online, multimedia documents.
Royce has taught at several universities in Brazil and Mexico, and also at a United Nations Summer School in the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. His research interests have focused on the relationship between atomic defects in materials and their macroscopic performance. He has published more than 100 articles in professional journals and scholarly books. He also served on the editorial board of Progress in Photothermal and Photoacoustic Science and Technology, is a member of the American Physical Society and is a past president of the Princeton chapter of Sigma Xi.
Royce has served as the director of graduate studies for his department and as an adviser to science and mathematics candidates for Marshall Fellowships. From 1986 to 1994, he was master of Mathey College. He holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of London, King’s College.