Michel Robe is The Clearing Corporation Charitable Foundation Professor in Derivatives Trading at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign's (UIUC) College of ACES. He was detailed to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Senior Economist in 2006 and 2008-2009 amid a commodity price boom and bust. He has continued to advise the CFTC as a consultant ever since. He has written numerous articles on the financialization of commodity markets ("who trades what, when, and does it matter?"), informed trading, financial regulation, and the causes and costs of volatility. His work has appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the International Economic Review, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Energy Journal, and numerous other academic journals and in books.

Professor Robe previously taught at the University of Miami, McGill University, and American University in Washington, DC. He has consulted for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). He received his Ph.D. in Financial Economics from Carnegie Mellon University.