Roll-Mecak received her PhD in molecular biophysics in 2002 from the Rockefeller University. There, she studied with Stephen Burley, and was mentored by other notable scientists such as Günter Blobel and Roderick MacKinnon. Her PhD work used X-ray crystallography to determine the structure and mechanism of the two translation initiation GTPases essential for assembling an 80S ribosome primed for protein synthesis.