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Tudor I. Oprea is a professor and chief of the Division of Translational Informatics, Department of Internal Medicine as well as a professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Chemistry & Chemical Biology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He is also a guest professor at Department of Rheumatology and Inflammation Research, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Education
Dr. Oprea obtained a B.Sc. degree in Chemistry at Banat College, Timişoara, Romania in 1983, and a Ph.D. degree in Molecular Physiology with Francisc Schneider in 1992 and a M.D. degree in General Medicine in 1990 from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Timişoara, Romania. He moved to the United States to conduct postdoctoral research with Prof. Garland R. Marshall at the Center for Molecular Design, School of Medicine, Washington University between 1992 and 1994. He was also a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Angel E. García in Theoretical Biology and Biophysics, Los Alamos National Laboratory between 1994 and 1996.

Research and career
His primary research interests are informatics, data sciences and computer-aided molecular discovery, machine learning and drug repurposing. He integrated experimental and computational approaches in the areas of chemical biology, pharmacology, clinical and translational informatics. While employed at AstraZeneca R&D, Mölndal, Sweden, he was tasked with the supervision of two global projects: 1. computational pharmacokinetics and 2. the global Compound Collection Enhancement project. He co-developed the lead-like concept with Paul Leeson, Andy Davis and Simon Teague. He also co-invented ChemGPS, a chemical space navigation tool. During his tenure at AstraZeneca, he developed his expertise in the area of screening informatics. He has also co-developed two major concepts in modern drug discovery: systems chemical biology and target development levels.

His overarching interest since 2013 has been the systematization of protein-centric knowledge, starting with the multi-layered evaluation of targets from the human proteome (GPCRs, ion channels and kinases). His group proposed a target classification scheme based on levels of evidence, which range from Tclin (targets associated with mode of action for marketed drugs) to Tdark (targets for which very little information is available), cross-indexing over 60 major resources. He is a part of the NIH “Illuminating the Druggable Genome” (IDG) initiative, which aims to develop machine learning and text mining based models for target prioritization and the IDG Knowledge Management Center.

He has 10 issued patents and over 200 peer-reviewed papers. He is the lead author on the most comprehensive list of drug targets. Other notable work include temporal analyses of disease progressions for the population of Denmark and rare diseases research as well as evaluation of novel therapeutic modalities for rare diseases and the rare disease proteome.

Awards and honors
Dr. Oprea has been the award winner of the UNM Annual Creative Award in recognition for issued patent for five consecutive years. He was the recipient of the prestigious Hansch Award from the QSAR and Modelling Society in 2002.

Other acitivities
He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board, InSilico Medicine, Hong Kong, China (since 2020) and ChemDiv Inc., San Diego (since 2002); a member of the External Advisory Board, IMIM (Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques), Barcelona, Spain (2010-2018); and a member of the Chemistry Services Advisory Board, EMBL-EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute), Hinxton, UK (2010-2017).