SW Jacobsz graduated from the University of Pretoria with B Eng and M Eng degrees and then worked at Jones & Wagener Consulting Civil Engineers as a geotechnical engineer. After three years he left for the United Kingdom to study towards a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He investigated the effects of tunnelling near piled foundations by means of centrifuge modelling. Thereafter he worked for Arup for one year on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project in London and carried out post-doctoral research on the development of wireless displacement transducers for use in tunnels in a UK government funded collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He returned to South Africa in 2003 and again working for Jones & Wagener before joining the University of Pretoria in 2010. He is currently collaborating with the Australian Centre for Geomechnics at the University of Western Australia, modelling cave mining in the geotechnical centrifuge.  He is lead SA researcher in a PhD exchange program between Durham University in the United Kingdom, lead by Dr Ashraf Osman, and five South African universities (the Universities of Pretoria, Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Johannesburg and the Central University of Technology) funded by the Newton Fund (UK) to the value of £200 000. The collaboration allows 10 PhD students from the SA partner institutions to spend 6 months at Durham University and students from Durham to spend time at a SA partner institution.

Fields of interest are Geotechnical Engineering, Physical modelling, Measuring techniques, Centrifuge testing and Full scale testing.