Dr. Oberlender began his studies in Pharmacy School at Temple University in his home town of Philadelphia. He worked as a pharmacist for two years at the Geisinger Medical Center before entering graduate school at Purdue University. There he worked in the group of David E. Nichols, PhD where he earned a PhD in medicinal chemistry making new serotonergic and dopaminergic drugs and studying their discriminative stimulus properties. After a pharmacology post-doc with Professor Nichols, he taught biochemistry and medicinal chemistry as an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA.

In 2000, Dr. Oberlender began working at New River Pharmaceuticals in Blacksburg where he was director of drug abuse science and played a key role in the discovery of NRP104, now marketed as VyvanseTM by Shire Pharmaceuticals. He began working at Synthonics in 2007 where he focuses on the experimental pharmacology of metal coordinated pharmaceuticals.