Assoc Prof Ovidiu Fira-Mladinescu, MD, PhD, Habil, is Head of the Pneumology Division at “Victor Babeș” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara and Chief of the IInd Clinic of Pulmonology at the Clinical Hospital of Infectious Diseases and Pneumophthisiology “Dr. Victor Babeș” Timisoara.
Related to his academic involvement in research activities and as director of the Centre for Research and Innovation in Personalised Medicine of Respiratory Diseases, he mentors PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. His main topics of interest for research are the following: to define clinical profiles of patients in relation to the concept of treatable features in obstructive and interstitial chronic respiratory pathology, to assess the potential benefits of using e-Health tools for the modern management of chronic lung diseases, to study cardio-pulmonary interrelations in long COVID-19 syndrome and to evaluate the influence of the pulmonary microbiota on the integrity and response to aggression of the lungs.
In his clinical activity, Assoc Prof Fira-Mladinescu is primarily concerned with interstitial lung diseases and pulmonary arterial hypertension, being the promoter of the certification of the Centre of Expertise for Rare Pulmonary Diseases by the Ministry of Health, the first centre and still the only one of this type in Romania.
His academic background in a preclinical discipline, physiopathology, combined with his clinical professional specialisation at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy from Timisoara, initially in internal medicine and later in pulmonology, explains the beginning orientation of his scientific research activity, especially towards translational research with applicability in clinical medical practice of the results obtained under laboratory conditions. Later, with the achievement of clinical integration and a more competitive transfer to the discipline of pneumology, his scientific concerns were mainly focused on the direction of multidisciplinary studies regarding patients with chronic pulmonary obstructive or interstitial pathology.
In the last eight years, he received diplomas of excellence from the Romanian Society of Pneumology for his contribution to the development of pulmonology in Romania. He was also awarded a prize from the Romanian Society of Physiological Sciences for a monography and an award for the best article published in the journal Pneumology in 2007.
