Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize winner, architect and pedagogue Rolandas Palekas graduated from the Vilnius Institute of Civil Engineering (now Vilnius Gediminas Technical University) in 1986. He took an internship in Copenhagen in 1992 and in New York in 1993. He has been working as an architect since 1986 and manages the company Paleko ARCH Studija since 2000. 

Palekas has created many unique buildings, and his projects have won many international and national competitions. Major projects: in Vilnius – Forum Palace sports, entertainment and business centre (with architects Gintaras Čaikauskas and Miroslaw Szejnicki, 2002), Litexpo exhibition pavilion (2005), Victoria office building (with architects Rapolas Bėčius and Andrė Baldišiūtė, 2005), Vilnius University Library Scholarly Communication and Information Centre (with others, 2012). He designed individual and multi-apartment residential houses in Vilnius (Rasų residential quarter, with architects Bartas Puzonas, Petras Išora, Rytis Mikulionis, Gytis Vaitkevičius, Povilas Daugis, 2015).

In 2007, Palekas was awarded the St. Christopher Award. In 2014, the architect was awarded the Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize and the Badge of Honour of the Lithuanian Union of Architects. 

Since 1990, Palekas has been teaching at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Vilnius Tech), where he is a professor since 2010. From 2017, he has been a member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.