Bartha Maria Knoppers, PhD, holds the Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine and the Chaire d’excellence Pierre Fermat (France). She is Professor at the Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal and Senior Researcher at the Centre de recherche en droit public (CRDP). She 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 Québec in 1985. She has authored numerous articles and books. Professor Knoppers is former Chair of the International Ethics committee of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), (1996-2004). She was a member of the International Bioethics Committee of the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which drafted the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1993-1997). She is also Co-Founder of the International Institute of Research in Ethics and Biomedicine (IIREB). From 2000-2006 she served on the Board of Genome Canada, and in 2003, became Chair of the Ethics Working Party of the International Stem Cell Forum.

Professor Knoppers received a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from the University of Waterloo (2001), a Doctor of Medicine Honoris Causa from Université de Paris V (René Descartes) (2002) and a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from McMaster University, Ontario (2007). In 2002, she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was selected as one of the 50 nation builders in Canada by the Globe and Mail, and named Officer of the Order of Canada. She founded the international Public Population Project in Genomics (P3G) in 2003. In that same year, she was elected Fellow of The Hastings Center (Bioethics), New York, member of the International Ethics Committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency and, in April 2005, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS). She was elected Governor of the Quebec Bar in 2006 and in 2007 was elected Advocatus Emeritus.