Dr. Zeltner was born and raised in Switzerland and received her Master’s degree in Zoology from the University of Zürich. She completed her PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, working on the use of adeno-associated virus (AAV) for gene therapy. She then was a post-doctoral fellow and later a Research Associate in Dr. Lorenz Studer’s lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dr. Zeltner joined UGA as an Assistant Professor in early 2018. Her research laboratory focuses on employing human pluripotent stem cells to model diseases of the peripheral nervous system. Familial Dysautonomia is one of the diseases the lab studies to understand better what the underlying mechanisms of disease are, to develop novel drug compounds and to understand more about pathologies of the sensory and sympathetic nervous system.