Rob earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, and held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Introduction to the Humanities program at Stanford, teaching in the Slavic Department's "Poetic Justice" course sequence as well as in other interdisciplinary humanities courses. He has also taught Polish language at Stanford and courses in Russian literature and culture at UCB and elsewhere in the Bay Area.

A specialist in literature and medicine of late 19th-century Russia, Rob has published articles in the Moscow-based Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (The New Literary Review) and in the anthology Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture (University of Toronto, 2006).

Most recently Rob served as an Academic Director in Undergraduate Advising and Research, taking responsibility for undergraduate advising in Stern Hall.  He also serves as a Study Leader on expeditions sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  In this capacity, he gave lectures to museum travelers aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway (between Vladivostok and Moscow) and passengers aboard the Volga Dream on the waterways between Moscow and St. Petersburg.  Rob brings an excellent combination of knowledge of Stanford and of Russian and East European Studies to CREEES.