Rosalie Tran obtained her undergraduate B.A. degree in Chemistry with honors from Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA, where she used fluorescence spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry to study phase behavior in phospholipid model membrane bilayer systems with Phoebe K. Dea.  Tran then moved to Berkeley, CA, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry at UC Berkeley as a joint student with Michael A. Marletta and Richard A. Mathies using resonance Raman spectroscopy, isotopic substitution, and site-directed mutagenesis to study heme structure and conformational changes in the Heme-Nitric oxide/OXygen binding (H-NOX) family. Upon completion of her doctoral work, Tran joined the Yachandra/Yano group in August 2010 as a postdoctoral fellow to study the Mn₄Ca cluster in Photosystem II using X-ray, EPR, and vibrational spectroscopy.  She received an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein fellowship in 2012.