Sarah E. Fitzpatrick

Sarah was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio and attended Ohio State University as an Eminence Fellow with a major in Neuroscience. While at OSU, she founded and ran the Theatre Arts Group, a program at a local high school in which she taught students about theatre and wrote and directed two plays with a team she ran. What started as her passion project has since expanded to multiple schools in Columbus, OH.

In addition to theatre, Sarah has been interested in brain development and neurodevelopmental disorders since high school when she worked with children with autism at Camp Stepping Stones every summer. She then spent 5 years working on clinical trials and conducting translational and basic research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS) at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, OSU, and the UC Davis MIND Institute.

After graduation, she worked at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for two years in Dr. Craig Erickson’s lab studying FXS before leaving the Midwest for Yale’s MD-PhD program in 2018. After two years of medical school, she is now a 5th year in the program and a PhD candidate in Dr. Ellen Hoffman’s lab, where she studies the roles of ASD-associated chromatin modifier genes in early brain development using zebrafish. She has served as a primary care provider in the Wednesday Evening Clinic for the past 2 years to stay connected to clinical medicine while in graduate school. Additionally, she is the head graduate affiliate for Davenport college, co-chair of the MD-PhD student council and PASS mentor, and president of the Yale Salsa Society. 

When not in the lab or clinic, her hobbies include salsa dancing, biking for commute and fun, most forms of exercise and outdoor activities, spending quality time with friends, her partner, and dog, building things at MakeHaven, and listening to podcasts.