Born in Lima, Perú (1955), Fernando Roca holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology (2004) from the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) Paris, France and a Master in Theology (1994) from Centre Sèvres also in Paris, France. He is an ethnobotanist and Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus, a religious order.

He found the first population of Parajubaea cocoides in the north of Peru in 2009 Palms (Vol 54 (3) 2010, pp.133-136).

After spending 15 years living in the northwest Amazonian rainforest of Peru, Fernando now lives in Lima and teaches at the University. He has been a member of the IPS since 2004. He continues to carry out field research in Peru and write articles and will shortly his thesis on Ethnobotanical traditional knowledge of the Amazonian Aguaruna-Huambisa people: The case of palms and orchids.