Bernard Maria, MD

Dr. Bernard Maria is one of the most respected child neurologists in America. He is a fellowship-trained pediatric neurologist and neuro-oncologist with privileges at Morristown Medical Center and Overlook Medical Center. He provides advanced care for children with a variety of neurologic and neuromuscular disorders. Dr. Maria is dual board-certified in pediatrics and in psychiatry and neurology, with special qualifications in child neurology. Listed repeatedly among the Castle Connolly America’s Top Doctors and a recipient of distinguished service, leadership and clinical expertise awards, Dr. Maria has garnered local and national recognition. He was the 2018 recipient of the Child Neurology Society’s highest honor, the Hower Award, which is given annually to a single child neurologist for contributions to the field, a first for New Jersey physicians. Dr. Maria has also served on the faculty of the University of Toronto, the University of Florida (division chief, where he received his MBA), the University of Missouri (department chair and pediatrician-in-chief), the Medical University of South Carolina (research institute founding executive director), and Augusta University at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia (department chair and pediatrician-in-chief), mentoring hundreds of medical students and research assistants. His own extensive research portfolio and over 250 publications focus on developing innovative therapies for central nervous system tumors, as well as understanding the genetics of brain malformations. Over the last three decades of clinical practice, Dr. Maria has held many leadership roles including chief resident (Johns Hopkins), program director, division chief, department chair, executive director, and (founding) chief medical officer of the Pediatric Health Improvement Coalition of Georgia. Academically, he has held endowed professorships and chairs and he has had continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health since 2001 for annual Neurobiology of Disease in Children conferences. Currently, Dr. Maria serves as chief of the Child Neurology and Developmental Medicine Division in Atlantic Health System’s Goryeb Children’s Hospital, in addition to holding the academic title of professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at the Sydney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University.