Dr. Bitzer graduated from the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany and also received a chemistry master's degree from the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany. He completed his internal medicine/nephrology residency at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany and medicine residency at Montefiore Medical Center, New York. He completed his nephrology fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. Dr. Bitzer is board-certified in internal medicine and nephrology. He has a special interest in all aspects of general adult nephrology, including chronic kidney disease (CKD).

His research attempts to discover new mechanisms and biomarkers for progressive organ fibrosis using the kidney as a model system. Our focus is on the identification of crosstalk between signaling cascades including TGF-beta and Growth Hormone signaling and on the role of small non-coding RNAs in this process. His team is applying models of acute and chronic kidney injury to mutant and transgenic mice and rats and use cell culture systems for further analysis.