The theme of the Arnold Laboratory is engineering enzymes by literally evolving them in the lab to do new things. The method pioneered and popularized by Prof. Arnold is “Directed Evolution,” which has been widely adopted by other laboratories and industries ranging from pharmaceuticals, agriculture, commodity chemicals, and household cleaning products. Dr. Tobias' thesis work was about extending directed evolution to multi-enzyme systems—in his case, to the metabolic pathways that build carotenoids, the molecular pigments found across plant and microbial life, which include beta-carotene and lycopene.

Industry and Government Career

After Caltech, Dr. Tobias joined DuPont Central Research and Development in Wilmington, Delaware. As a research engineer and principal investigator, he leveraged his background in genetically engineering organisms to make new or different chemicals to make important contributions to ambitious biotechnology projects such the Butamax BioButanol joint venture. Later, Dr. Tobias managed the Experimental Station’s Laboratory Automation and High Throughput Screening team and facility.

In 2016, Dr. Tobias and his family relocated to Montgomery County, Maryland. There, Dr. Tobias has worked for Meso Scale Diagnostics, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and The MITRE Corporation. In addition to publishing numerous research articles and patented inventions, Dr. Tobias’ teams have also developed commercialized products such as ELISA assay kits and Designed Enzymatic Biomaterials.

A Passion for Mentoring Students

At the Army Research Laboratory, Dr. Tobias began mentoring summer students and volunteering for eCybermission, a national STEM competition for middle schoolers. In addition to the intrinsic rewards of teaching well and rapidly seeing the results, his students’ enthusiasm for the promise of science and engineering to improve lives and the world was contagious and energizing. It was absolutely a mutually beneficial arrangement. Dr. Tobias was recognized as eCybermission’s CyberGuide Mentor of the Year in 2022. At MITRE, Dr. Tobias continued to mentor high school and college-level student researchers, refining his approach to designing and guiding his students through projects appropriately scoped for their 10-week internships.