Roger M. Rowell (born November 28, 1939) is an American biochemist and wood scientist of the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison and emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,[1] who is an elected fellow (FIAAM) of the International Association for Advanced Materials and an elected fellow (FIAWS) of the International Academy of Wood Science.

Between 1966 and 2007, Rowell served as a leading research chemist at the USDA – Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, with professorship appointments in the departments of Forestry and Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

His work includes more than 300 research papers, several international patents,[6] and many conference presentations.

[7][8] He has been a visiting professor and scholar at several research institutes and universities in countries such as Japan, Sweden, China, Norway, South Korea, New Zealand.

In October 2023, a referenced meta-research conducted by John Ioannidis and his team at Stanford University included Roger M. Rowell in Elsevier Data 2022, where he was ranked in the global top 2% of researchers of all time in the area of wood chemistry (forestry – chemistry).