She was residency trained in Family and Community Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and Wright State University’s Aerospace Medicine/human factors residency program. She was a Distinguished Military Graduate from Princeton University’s Army ROTC program, Distinguished Member of the Technology Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, and graduated from the Air War College and the Army Command and General Staff College. She was New Mexico Homeland Security Director and Deputy Secretary for Public Safety and served as the Senior Assistant to the Chief, National Guard Bureau, (NGB), as well as the Chief ’s Advisor for Civil-Military. She served in the U.S. Army and taught combat medicine skills to SF Medics (18D) and PJs at Ft. Bragg and Pope AFB. She was a member of the first Forward Surgical Team and Senior Flight Surgeon for the 57th MEDEVAC, Ft. Bragg. She provided support during and post-9/11, was the first Director of Intelligence (J2) for NGB, and supported Hurricane Katrina humanitarian response. In parallel, she was a member of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board. She was a senior advisor to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where she led an initiative for AFMIC to predict and counter global infectious disease challenges. She was part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Dr. Sobel was a recipient of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Alumni Association visionary leadership award in 2023 and the Anti-Defamation League’s Distinguished Public Service Award for conceiving and implementing the first nationally recognized interfaith First Amendment Working Group while serving as Director of Homeland Security in New Mexico. She was also awarded the Lubbock, TX, YWCA’s Women of Excellence (Government category) award, the NATO award for lifetime service for understanding the threats posed by WMD, the Rotary award for ‘Service above Self ’, the Aerospace Medical Association’s (AsMA’s) Julian Ward Award, and the Aerospace Human Factors Association’s Taylor Award. She is an Academician of the International Academy of Aviation and Space Medicine, a Fellow of AsMA, a Fellow and Council member of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a Navy-trained Hyperbaric Medicine Advisor. She was selected as an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, recognized internationally for her pioneering work in telemedicine implementation, having flown as crew on the first telemedicine aeroevacuation demonstration in European Command and implementation in Antarctica. She also served as Guest Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Bioscience Division.