Prof. Rollett has been a Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) since 1995 and was the Department Head 1995-2000. Prior to CMU he worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (1979-1995). He spent ten years in management with five years as a Group Leader (and then Deputy Division Director) at Los Alamos, followed by five years as Department Head at CMU (1995-2000). The main focus of his research is on the measurement and computational prediction of microstructural evolution especially in three dimensions. His interests include strength of materials, constitutive relations, microstructure, texture, anisotropy, grain growth, recrystallization, formability and stereology.

He was the Chair of the International Conference on Texture (ICOTOM-15), which was held on campus at CMU June, 2008 and is a member of its International Scientific Committee. From 2001-2013 he was the Chair of the International Committee of the conference on Grain Growth and Recrystallization that is held every three years; the next meeting will be in Pittsburgh in 2016. He was a co-Chair of the 13th International Conference on Aluminum and its Applications, which was held on campus at CMU in June 2012. He is a co-author of the texture analysis package popLA, and the polycrystal plasticity code, LApp; he is also a contributor to the Dream.3D software package and the well-known textbook Texture & Anisotropy edited by Kocks, Tomé and Wenk.