Rustom did his MS in Physics at IIT Bombay, PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a post-doc at Imperial College in London, before joining the Department of Biology at Emory University. He has broad interests in pathogen-host interactions. Most of his work focuses on understanding the dynamics of the pathogen and the immune responses, and the generation of immunological memory. He is also interested in linking the dynamics of infections at the within-host and between-host levels, as well as exploring the evolution of pathogens and the emergence of new infectious diseases.