Since 1983 he worked as laboratory technician in Charles Geard Radiology Research, Columbia University Physicians and Sciences.

[2] in Richard Lenski lab, following the evolutionary change in 12 populations of Escherichia coli propagated in 10,000 generations in identical environments.

This works suggests chance events, such as mutation and drift, play an important role in adaptive evolution, as do the complex genetic interactions that underlie the structure of organisms.

[3] The Travisano group showed that settling in a static test tube provided a simple selection scheme that favored the formation of multicellular clonal clusters in yeast--dubbed ‘snowflakes’ .

Cells of brewer’s yeast release an enzyme that breaks indigestibly large sugar molecules into smaller, more easily digestible subunits.

Working with his postdoctoral associate, Duncan Greig, Travisano experimentally demonstrated speciation in the laboratory via a previously unknown mechanism.