Dr. Roberts received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Guelph (Guelph, Ontario, Canada) in 1988. He spent one year as a post-doctoral researcher at the Insitut des Sciences Nucléaires in Grenoble, France, followed by a year and a half in the Physics Department at Harvard University. He joined the faculty at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1991. While there, he was also a member of the Theory Group at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. In 1994, Dr. Roberts received a National Young Investigator award from the NSF.

Dr. Roberts joined the faculty at FSU as a full professor in the Physics Department. He has also been a Program Officer in the Physics Division at the NSF, and a Program Manager in the Office of Nuclear Physics at the Department of Energy.

Dr. Roberts' research focuses on the properties of hadrons. He has used quark models, the heavy quark effective theory, phenomenological lagrangians and a variety of numerical methods to delve into the structure and properties of these sub-atomic particles.