David Stern PhD

David L. Stern is a senior group leader at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He studied biology at Cornell University before completing his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He became a research fellow at Cambridge University before taking up a Professorship at Princeton. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Genetics in Japan and at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. His lab aims to identify the genetic and neural basis for the evolution of behavior.

The pointy hairs on a fruit fly leg might not be the first place you'd look for the underlying mechanism of evolution. But David Stern has used bald patches among the hairs to pinpoint the slight genetic differences that separate one fruit fly species from another.

These insights are not just about hairy fruit flies. They are helping him answer important questions about how genes shape evolution, says Stern, a Group Leader at Janelia. "We're going to get deep, fundamental insights into how organisms work by studying how they evolve," he asserts.

Originally trained as a field biologist, Stern brings a deep appreciation for the diversity among organisms to studies of development and evolution. As an HHMI investigator, interested in ecology and evolutionary biology, Stern hopes to look beyond the physical characteristics to the genetic basis for behavior. "It's the original question I've always wanted to ask. Now we have the tools," he says.

Stern's scientific curiosity was originally piqued by plants. "I can remember being fascinated as a child by a movie showing Gregor Mendel in his garden," he recalls. When Stern enrolled at Cornell University as an undergraduate, he intended to study plant molecular biology. "I wanted to participate in the New Green Revolution."