Checo J. Rorie was born in Monroe, NC. He graduated from Forest Hills High School, Marshville, NC, in 1994. He graduate from Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA, in 1998 with a B.S. in Biology. He then attended and graduated from the Curriculum in Toxicology PhD program at UNC Chapel Hill in 2004. He did a postdoc at New York University in the Department of Biochemistry from 2004-2005. He did a second postdoc in the SPIRE Program and in the Radiation Oncology Department at UNC Chapel Hill from 2005-2008. He then joined the Department of Biology at NCA&T as an Adjunct Professor in 2008, and in 2010 was offered a tenure track position as the Professor of Genetics. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2016. He currently has a Cancer Genetics and Cancer Cell Biology lab where he trains and mentors high school, undergraduate, master, and doctoral students.