In 1974, Candace Pert earned a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she worked in the laboratory of Solomon Snyder and discovered the brain’s opiate receptor.[2] Previously, she completed her undergraduate studies in biology, cum laude in 1970 from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Pert conducted a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Department of Pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1974-1975. She conducted research at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1975 to 1987.