Professor Bartha Maria Knoppers is a Full Professor at Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal. She is Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine and also Counsel to Borden Ladner Gervais.
Professor Knoppers is a graduate of McMaster University, (B.A.), University of Alberta (M.A.), McGill University (LL.B., B.C.L.), Cambridge University, U.K., (D.L.S.), Sorbonne (Paris I) (Phd.) and was admitted to the Bar of Quebec in 1985. She received a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from the University of Waterloo in October 2001 and received a Doctor of Medicine Honoris Causa from Universit‚ de Paris V (Ren‚ Descartes) in December 2002.
Professor Knoppers has worked as consultant for the World Health Organization (Geneva), and is a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum (Davos). She is Former Commissioner of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies (1991-1994). She was also named Visiting Heritage Scientist by the Alberta Medical Research Heritage Fund (1993-1995).
As Former President of the Canadian Bioethics Society and Former Vice-President of the National Council on Bioethics in Human Research, she co-chaired the Quebec Bar Committee on the Representation of Children (1993-1995). She was a member of the Management Committee of the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Initiative (CBCRI) (1995-1999) and the National Expert Advisory Committee on Xenotransplants (Health Canada) (1995-1999). She was also Chair of the Social Issues Committee of the American Society of Human Genetics (1995-1998). She was a member of the International Bioethics Committee of the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and participated in drafting the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1993-1997).
She chaired the Organizing Committee of the First International Conference on DNA Sampling: Ethical, Legal and Policy Aspects (Montreal) (1996) and the Third on DNA Sampling: Population and Communities (2002). She was named "Scientist of the Year" by Radio-Canada and by the newspaper La Presse (1997) and received the Medal of the Quebec Bar (1997). She was also selected as a NationBuilder by the Globe and Mail (2002).
Professor Knoppers is currently Chair of the International Ethics Committee of the Human Genome Project (HUGO). She is also Co-Founder of the International Institute of Research in Ethics and Biomedicine (IIREB) and a Co-Director of the Quebec Network of Applied Genetic Medicine (RMGA). She is a member of the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee (1999-now), and of the Board of Genome Canada (2000-now). She is also member of the Standing Ethics Committee of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and of the External Review Board of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (2001-now). She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002-now) and an Officer of the Order of Canada (2002-now).