After receiving undergraduate degrees in English and Chemistry from the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA), Melissa Rooney attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  She studied electrochemistry under the direction of R. Mark Wightman, and was awarded her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UNC in 1998. From 1999-2002 she conducted electrochemistry research in the laboratory of Alan M. Bond at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She was awarded a Post Doctoral Fellowship from the Australian Research Council for 2000-2003. 

In 2002, she returned to North Carolina to raise her family with her husband, Mike Rooney. Since then, she has published children’s stories and verses in Highlights Children’s Magazine and Bay Leaves. Her children’s stories, Beyond the Dark, Milk Drinkers turning to Powder, and Counting on Me  won first place in their categories in the Burlington Writers Contests (Stories for Children and Children's Poetry categories, 2009 and 2016), and her verse Hope was awarded first place by the Poetry Council of North Carolina (Traditional Poetry Category, 2009). 

Eddie the Electron and The Fate of The Frog form the basis of two workshops offered through theDurham Arts Council's Culture and Arts in the Public Schools (CAPS) program, through which Melissa teaches elementary and middle school students about electrons and atoms or sustainability and rhyme, respectively. For her involvement in public education, she received the first Durham Public Schools' Get Involved! award in 2011.

When she is not writing creatively or engaging kids, Melissa provides contract scientific editing for Durham-based American Journal Experts, freelance editing for new authors, and her time and advocacy as an Associate Supervisor on Durham's Soil and Water Conservation District.