Deborah Tobiason came to Carthage in 2007 from Northwestern University, where she was a research assistant professor at Feinberg School of Medicine. She had been a postdoctoral fellow at Feinberg, a biochemistry lecturer at Elmhurst College in 2004, and a lecturer in the Upward Bound program at Columbia College in Chicago from 2000 to 2003. She earned a B.S. in biology from Loyola College of Maryland in 1992, and a Ph.D. in microbiology and molecular genetics from Emory University in 1998.