Rolf Frischknecht studied civil engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Between 1990 and 1997 he worked at the Department of Energy Technology at ETH Zurich on methodology, data collection and data management for life cycle inventories of energy systems and was responsible for the development of the first version of an internet-based LCA database. He wrote his Ph.D. on life cycle inventory analysis and decision making. In 1998 he founded ESU-services and was its managing director until 2012. From 1998 to 2008 he was managing director of the ecoinvent Centre, leading the design, build-up, introduction and operation of the world leading, consistent and transparent web-based LCA database.

Rolf Frischknecht is guest author in scientific journals and invited speaker at national and international conferences. Until 2019 he was co-chair of the flagship project "global guidance on environmental impact assessment indicators" of the international Life Cycle Initiative hosted by UN Environment and subject editor LCI methodology and databases of the "International Journal of LCA" (Springer publishing). Until 2020 he was honorary member of the ecoinvent association. He is board member of the society of the Swiss LCA discussion forum and since 2000 he teaches LCA on bachelor and master level at ETH Zürich.