A Soft Spot for Fruit Flies

Like Stephen Braren, Stephen Formel explored his artistic side before finding his true calling in research science. After high school in the small town of Claverack, New York, he earned a degree in film at the Rochester Institute of Technology. But he soon realized that he wasn’t much interested in making movies.

Formel discovered his interest in science while working summers as a scuba instructor – a job that demanded a basic knowledge of coastal ecology and the chemistry of gas, “to make sure you don’t kill yourself,” he says. So he returned to school, thinking he might become a high school science teacher.

“There’s no way I’d have gone back to college without CUNY,” he notes. “I was still paying off loans from my first degree, and CUNY was incredibly affordable. And I’m really glad I chose Hunter, because it has a stellar biology program.”

That program began with BIO 100, taught by Professor Adrienne Alaie, whom Formel calls “an excellent teacher, passionate about the work, who pushes all her students to reach for a little more.“

Formel discovered his affinity for fruit flies while working with researcher Livia Johnson in Professor Diana Bratu’s molecular biology lab. As he grew the flies, fed them sugar and starches, and studied the messenger RNA in their eggs, he felt very grateful to be working in a lab in which nurturing mentors offered “a safe, welcoming space to learn and grow as a scientist.” After what he calls a “whirlwind first year” at Hunter, he won a scholarship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to spend the summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., studying neuro-degenerative diseases in squid. And when Formel returned for his senior year, Professor Bratu put him on the laboratory payroll – “which was very flattering for an undergrad,” he says.

After graduating, Formel headed to New Orleans to earn his PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at Tulane. Now, as he and his wife celebrate both his NSF fellowship and the upcoming birth of their first child, he is studying Spartina alterniflora, the foundational species of the salt marsh, and the various forces – natural and man-made – affecting the microbes influencing the plant’s survival.

“I find myself extremely well-prepared for doctoral studies at this leading university,” he observes. “Now, more than ever, I realize that my classes at Hunter were at a very high level – probably higher than those at many elite institutions.”