Oliver M. Schlüter obtained his M.D. and doctoral degrees from the Universities of Göttingen and Hannover in 2000/2001. He performed his doctoral thesis work at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen, Germany, with Thomas C. Südhof, on the role of the Rab3/rabphilin in synaptic vesicle exocytosis. From 2001 to 2002, Schlüter trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Christian Rosenmund and Reinhard Jahn at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, where he described the role of Rab3A in regulating a super-primed pool of synaptic vesicles. From 2002 to 2006, Schlüter continued his postdoctoral training with Robert C. Malenka at Stanford University Medical Center, where he pioneered the use of viral-mediated molecular replacement in the study of synaptic function and described isoform-specific functions of the signaling scaffold family of PSD-95.

Schlüter started his independent career at an assistant-professor-level position at the European Neuroscience Institute in Göttingen in 2006 and continued his work in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh in 2014. His work initially focused on isoform-specific functions of PSD-95-related proteins in the hippocampus. Later on, Schlüter’s work included the analysis of the physiological and pathophysiological role of silent synapses in critical period plasticity and drug addiction models.