When Robert Boria was studying at City College in the late 2000s, he could never have envisioned a life outside of New York, let alone a career so heavily focused on rodents.
In the two decades since graduating CCNY, Boria has spent little time in his hometown, having moved from coast to coast following a career in biology. In 2024, he cemented his bond to California, by securing a position at San Francisco State University (SFSU) as an assistant professor. His research focuses on how animals move around “especially with regards to past climate change, and seeing how we can use that information to see how animals are going to respond in the future,” according to Boria.
“Mostly I study mice and rats for a living. And I never would have thought, especially coming from New York City, that that’s what I would be doing,” Boria said.
Boria studied at CCNY from 2006 to 2011, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology. For Boria, his path as an evolutionary biologist was not always clear. He spent much time, as many undergraduates do, vacillating between potential career options.
“When I started in 2006, I think I initially wanted to do med school and then pretty quickly I decided, no, that’s not for me,” Boria said. “At some point I transitioned to thinking about being a high school teacher.”
His passion for the field of research became more clear when he began working at The Anderson Lab at City College. There he worked alongside Dr. Robert P. Anderson, conducting research on biogeography, looking at how various species have moved around over time. He also received funding from the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation program, or LSAMP, which helped him accomplish his master’s degree.
After graduating from City College, he received his PhD from the University of California at Merced, having secured funding from the Ford Foundation. From there he went back to the East Coast to do his postdoctoral research at Harvard University where he would study deer mice and genetic diversity in response to warming climates. This work eventually landed Boria the position at SFSU.
“It’s always been a passion of mine… to take what I know and pass it on to the next generation. So a lot of what I do is still centered around that one goal,” Boria said.
For his most recent research paper, “Pleistocene climatic oscillations impact the diversification of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) and the independent evolution of ecotypes,” Boria and his team studied ecotypes that emerged after the Last Glacial Maximum, the period of time with extensive global ice coverage. When temperatures began to rise again and forested areas cropped up, subsets of deer mice evolved to parallel the changing environments.
“We X-rayed a thousand individuals, we gathered 29,000 museum records,” Boria said. “We think that as it gets colder and warmer, that those expansions and contraction events likely led to these forest and prairie versions across the landscape.”
Boria hopes to continue conducting his research, exploring the wide range of organisms in San Francisco. “The Bay Area is a super cool spot because the history is well known. There’s a lot of people here, but it’s also very rich in biodiversity, especially with small mammals. And so we’re really trying to understand the impact of urbanization on Bay Area small mammal biodiversity,” Boria said.
Boria remains grateful for all the support he received during his undergraduate years, the funding having been paramount to his success. “I’ve been really lucky that I’ve been able to get fellowships throughout my career,” Boria said. “Unfortunately, all of the fellowships that I got don’t exist anymore.”
Working as a professor, Boria has seen the financial hurdles that current undergraduates have been facing in recent years. But in the face of such uncertainty, he continues to encourage students to pursue their passions, never knowing what new opportunities may arise.
“Don’t limit yourself. Let life happen and take you wherever it takes you and see where you end up,” Boria said.
Yadira Gonzalez is a graduate of Baruch College where she studied journalism and minored in film. She was an editor-in-chief of Baruch’s award-winning magazine Dollars and Sense. Her writing has also been published in Documented, The New York Review of Books and AdAge.