Dr. Zitser moved to San Francisco in the summer of 2017, in order to start her Fellowship as an Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI). Her aim during this fellowship was to acquire knowledge, tools, and connections to advance neurological care, while further emphasizing the importance of maintaining a healthy brain. She also hoped to develop the communication skills needed to educate the medical and general community about aging and sleep disturbances. Her hope is that through proper treatment and guidance, she can help integrate patients back into society and improve the quality of their lives.

Before becoming a GBHI Fellow, Dr. Zitser worked as a neurologist at the Movement Disorders and Neuroautonomic Clinic in the Tel Aviv Medical Center. There, she mainly took care of the Parkinson and Parkinson Plus patients. She also leaded the Huntington Disease Multidisciplinary Clinic in Tel Aviv, the only Huntington disease specialized clinic in Israel. This former type of patient have a wide spectrum of autonomic problems, which raised her curiosity for the autonomic system and inspired her to pursue research. 

Through her work, she realized that most patients can cope well with the motor limitations of neurodegenerative illnesses, but they find the non motor issues (sleep, cognitive and autonomic disturbances) more challenging. Current treatment methodologies and tools are insufficient for treating patients and improving the quality of their lives. Therefore, further research, resources, and precise application of skills is needed in order to improve treatment for every single patient.

In 2021 Dr. Zitser moved from UCSF to Stanford University as an ISRTP (International Sleep Research Fellow), were she spent a year training on both autonomic and sleep disturbances. In 2022 she obtained she was certified as a sleep specialist by the World Sleep Society.

She returned to Israel in the summer of 2022, where she hopes to contribute to the further development of the sleep, autonomic medicine and the dementia field in Israel, all of it with the objective of advancing treatment opportunities for our patients, as well as the knowledge related to these diseases.