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Student Profile

Jaclyn Rittershaus

Jaclyn Rittershaus

[email protected]

Department: Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences
Advisor: Preethi Ganapathy, MD PhD

Profile:

After spending my formative years on Long Island, I pursued dual French and Psychology
degrees at SUNY New Paltz, where I became fascinated by the intersection of linguistics and
the human brain. I took a gap year after graduation in 2014 to research different neuroscience PhD programs, and quickly realized I needed a job to pay back my imminently due student loans. I secured a full-time position at a local bookstore, where I met many interesting characters from all walks of life. This role taught me that no matter what career I had in the future, I wanted there to be a human element to it. I then shifted my focus from neuroscience to neurology, and I started in Stony Brook’s postbaccalaureate pre-medicine program not long after. I worked in Dr. Kotov’s lab at Stony Brook, where I assisted with the longest running longitudinal study on schizophrenia. Once I finished at Stony Brook, I started at Upstate in 2021 as an MD-only student. However,after volunteering in Dr. Huaiyu Hu’s lab and studying photoreceptor degeneration in retinitis pigmentosa, I recognized that a career as a physician-scientist would offer the perfect blend of research and clinical practice I had been seeking.
In my spare time, you can find me learning new songs on the guitar, watching Formula 1
racing, reading with my cat nestled on my lap, or working on house projects with my husband.

Publications

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36499139/



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