Rowan earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Glasgow. His post-doctoral work began in the Chemistry Department at the University of Cambridge, continued at  Girton College, Cambridge, and culminated at the University of California, Los Angeles. Rowan was the Kent Hale Smith Professor in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University before joining the faculty IME in 2016.

Rowan won the American Chemical Society Mark Scholar Award, the Morley Medal, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the CWRU School of Engineering Research Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Deputy Editor of Macro Letters, published by the American Chemical Society, and a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of Polymer Science Part A: Polymer Chemistry, Chemical Science, the Journal of Macromolecular Science, and Pure & Applied Chemistry.