 Prior to his position at NYU, Ostrer was a research associate of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the faculty of the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, Florida.Ostrer has been a long-time investigator of the genetic basis of rare disorders
- thalassemias, color vision deficiencies, hereditary sensory neuropathies, disorders of sex development and newly identified genetic syndromes.While working at the Khao I Dang Holding Center in Thailand in 1981, he recruited Thai and Khmer subjects into a study of the shared origin of the Hemoglobin E mutation.