Fellow Roger H Stolen completed his undergraduate education at St. Olaf College before moving on to the University of California Berkeley where he earned his PhD. He the completed postdoctoral work at the University of Toronto. He worked for 30 years at Bell Labs before joining Virginia Tech as a professor of electrical engineering. He retired from there in 2006 and joined Clemson University as Distinguished Visiting Professor.

He has received numerous awards and recognitions over his career. He received the R.W. Wood Prize in 1990 and later the John Tyndall Award in 2005. In 2008 he was elected as a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in 2012 to the National Academy of Engineering.