Dr. Oaklander is Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Assistant in Pathology (Neuropathology) at the Massachusetts General Hospital. After attending Cornell she received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees (in Neuroscience) from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She completed her Neurology residency at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, followed by fellowship in peripheral nerve disorders at Johns Hopkins. She then joined Hopkins’ faculty in the Neurosurgery department. At Massachusetts General, she directs the Nerve Unit, a federally funded research team that studies peripheral nerve disorders and a group of peripheral nerve physicians. Her team's interests include the Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) and complications of shingles. Her group discovered that small-fiber polyneuropathy causes widespread chronic pain and multi-symptom illnesses in children and young adults, and they reported that small-fiber polyneuropathy underlies 40% of fibromyalgia cases.

Dr. Oaklander has more than 100 publications and serves on editorial boards for the journals PAIN and Neurology Today. A Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and of the American Neurological Association, she is named in America’s Top Doctors, America’s Top Physicians, and US News and World Report. She directs MGH’s neurodiagnostic skin-biopsy service. Her work has been profiled in Science, Scientific American Mind, and by PBS. She serves on NIH’s Research Council and has served on panels for the NIH, the FDA, and the Institute of Medicine.