Roger Wartell received his B.S. degree in Physics from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1966. In 1971, he received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Rochester where he worked in the group of Elliot Montroll on the DNA helix-coil transition. From 1971-1973 he was a NIH postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Robert Wells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1978-79, and Visiting Scholar at National Institutes of Health-Bethesda from 1987-88.
Wartell joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1974. Roger received a NIH Career Development Award in 1979 and served as Associate Chair in School of Physics from 1987-88, and Chair of the School of Biology from 1990-2004. He is a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Georgia Tech. His current research is focused on protein-RNA interactions relating to sRNA regulation in bacteria, and the assembly and reactions of small RNAs in ice.