[1] She moved across the United States for her graduate studies, joining the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Massachusetts for a master's degree.
[1] After completing her master's degree in 2002, Carlson joined the University of Washington School for Aquatic and Fisheries Science as a doctoral researcher.
[1][3] Carson studies how predator-prey relationships and anthropogenic influences inform the ecology and evolution of freshwater fish populations.
[4] After graduating, Carlson was awarded a Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellowship to join the University of Oslo Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis.
[4] In 2007 Carlson was awarded appointed an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biological Informatics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.