Abel was a research assistant in the lab who worked on Drosophila ovarian morphogenesis from 2008-2009, after obtaining his BSc in physics from Grinnell College. Abel’s work contributed to a paper on ovariole number in Drosophila that was published in Developmental Biology. Abel went on to attend Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University and is now a Public Health Advisor at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention