Bertha Madras

Bertha Kalifon Madras is a Canadian professor of psychobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard University. She also chairs the Division of Neurochemistry at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University. She has worked as associate director for public education in the division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School. Madras's research focuses on drug addiction (particularly the effects of cocaine), ADHD, and Parkinson's disease.

Madras earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with honors from McGill University in 1963. As a J.B. Collop Fellow of the Faculty of Medicine, she earned a PhD in biochemistry (metabolism and pharmacology, including hallucinogens) from McGill University in 1967. She completed postdoctoral fellowships in biochemistry at Tufts University/Cornell University Medical College (1966–1967) as well as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1967–1969).

Madras was appointed a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972–1974) and an assistant professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. She joined the Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor in 1986 and was subsequently promoted to associate professor, then full professor, with a cross-appointment to the Department of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Madras also founded and chaired the Division of Neurochemistry at Harvard Medical School's New England Primate Research Center—a multidisciplinary translational research program that spans chemical design, molecular and cellular biology, behavioral biology, and brain imaging approaches. She directs the Laboratory of Addiction Neurobiology, McLean Hospital, in conjunction with the Harvard Brain Science initiative.