Dr. Oaklander, Harvard Medical School Associate Professor of Neurology and Assistant in Neurology and Neuropathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, directs MGH’s Nerve Unit. After undergraduate studies at Columbia and Cornell she received MD and PhD (neuroscience) degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After Rutgers Neurology residency and Peripheral Nerve fellowships at Johns Hopkins, she joined Hopkins’ faculty. Currently she directs an NIH-funded research lab that investigates peripheral neuropathy. Her 130+ publications document evidence of small-fiber pathology in 40% of fibromyalgia patients, and her lab characterized early onset small-fiber neuropathy, which causes multi-symptom illnesses in children and young adults. She proposed B-cell mediated inflammation/autoimmunity as the most common cause and published the first study showing benefit from immunotherapy. She co-authored the first clinical trial for HSAN-1, and founded and directs the NeuropathyCommons website.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association, her research has been profiled in Science, Scientific American Mind, by PBS and on YouTube. She is listed in America’s Top Doctors, America’s Top Physicians, and US News and World Report. She has served on NIH’s Research Advisory Council and on review and advisory panels for the NIH, the FDA, the AAN, and the Institute of Medicine, and on multiple journal editorial boards, currently Neurology® Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation.