Dr. Bertha Madras, Deputy Director of Demand Reduction, ONDCP

Bertha Madras, Ph.D., currently serves as the Deputy Director for Demand Reduction in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Prior to joining ONDCP, Dr. Madras was Professor of Psychobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She chaired the Division of Neurochemistry at the New England Primate Research Center and served as Associate Director for Public Education in the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School.

At Harvard, she supervised a translational research program on how the brain responds and adapts to drugs, and developed novel brain probes and candidate therapeutic agents for substance abuse and other brain disorders. She is author of more than 130 scientific manuscripts and book chapters, and a recipient of 16 patents with her collaborators, an National Institutes of Health (NIH)—National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) MERIT award, and a NIDA Public Service Award. One of her discoveries, a class of agents that images brain cells in the living brain, affected by methamphetamine and Parkinson's disease, was recently highlighted in the Better World Report as one of 25 technology transfer innovations that changed the world.

She has served on a number of NIH committees, and advisory boards (e.g., NIDA Medications Development Scientific Advisory Board), the Advisory Board of the Addiction Studies Institute for Journalists, the Science and Technology Advisory Committee of Brookhaven National Laboratory and others.

For fourth-year Harvard Medical School students, she developed an elective course on substance abuse and addiction, taught in a number of continuing medical education (CME) courses, and created a course on the Cell Biology of Addiction at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She avidly promoted the translation of scientific discoveries for the public good, by directing a NIDA-sponsored exhibit at the Museum of Science, Boston titled "Changing your Mind: Drugs in the Brain," a CD, and two-actor play. She has also delivered numerous talks on the impact of drugs and addiction to audiences ranging from high school students to lawyers and judges, nationally and in four other continents.

Dr. Madras received a BSc (honors biochemistry) and a Ph.D. from McGill University and conducted post-doctoral research at MIT. She is married to Dr. Peter Madras and rejoices in her daughters Cynthia and Claudine, son-in-law Cary, and grandchildren Andrew and Zachary.