Hi Carlos,
There are labs and community extensions for KNIME, so you can use them within KNIME. (Under Windows there are binaries of R that can be installed, not sure it supports installing packages.) I guess you can install/check R packages from within the R nodes. You should specify in the metadata of the workflow which extensions, R version are required if you plan to share that. (Sometimes I wish I had shared these infos with myself for my workflows.)
The KNIME Utilities are specific for certain tasks I needed, so beyond those, it might be less interesting for others, it should have some updates, although not sure I'll perform those in the near future, so it might worth seeking for alternatives. ;)
Cheers, gabor
PS.: Have fun and success working on your PhD dissertation! :)