Nicholas Bodor is Founding Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of Bodor Laboratories, Inc. and a Graduate Research Professor Emeritus (active) at the University of Florida (UF) College of Pharmacy. An internationally recognized leader in drug discovery, design and delivery, he joined UF in 1979 as Professor and Chairman of the Medicinal Chemistry Department and was promoted to Graduate Research Professor in 1983. He was the Executive Director of the college’s Center for Drug Discovery, founded by him in 1986. During his tenure at UF, Dr. Bodor supervised the training of more than 50 doctoral students and over 100 postdoctoral level research associates and fellows. In February 2000, he took a leave of absence from his academic posts in order to accept a position as Senior Vice President of Basic Research and Drug Discovery at the IVAX Corporation. Dr. Bodor then served as Chief Scientific Officer of the IVAX Corporation, as well as President of the IVAX Research Institute. During this period, he simultaneously led Hungary’s Institute for Drug Research (some 450 researchers) as its Managing Director until his retirement from IVAX in October 2005. He founded Bodor Laboratories in 2006, where he continues his work overseeing development of his drug designs to market.

Dr. Bodor's main research interests include design of drugs with improved therapeutic index, design of new chemical delivery systems, computer-assisted drug design, drug transport and metabolism, and theoretical and mechanistic organic chemistry. An internationally recognized leader in drug discovery, design and delivery, he has introduced revolutionary, general, comprehensive drug design and drug targeting concepts known as retrometabolic drug design approaches. These concepts strategically combine chemical and enzymatic (metabolic) processes to achieve drug targeting and to produce safe drugs and safe environmental chemicals. The two major classes of the retrometabolic drug design concepts contain “chemical drug targeting systems” (CDS) and the “soft drugs” (SD). Each of these large classes contains various subclasses, based on the different design rules. The design concepts incorporated in the soft drug approaches were used by Dr. Bodor to develop a general and comprehensive program, including a computerized expert system which can be used to design all potential and possible metabolites and the corresponding safe active soft drugs or chemical delivery systems. He is an author of more than 530 publications and named inventor on over 340 patents, including 180+ in the U.S. The soft steroid Loteprednol Etabonate, designed by Dr. Bodor, is the active ingredient of some dozen medications in the U.S. and more than 50 worldwide, including ophthalmic, nasal and topical drugs. The soft anticholinergic Sofpironium Bromide was introduced in Japan in 2020 as ECCLOCKTM and launched in the U.S. in late 2024 as Sofdra® for treatment of primary axillary hyperhidrosis (a previously unmet need). Mavenclad®, also invented by Dr. Bodor, is an oral treatment of Multiple Sclerosis which reached blockbuster status in 2023.

Dr. Bodor received his B.S./M.S. degree in Organic Chemistry in 1959 at Bolyai University in Transylvania, and his Ph.D. degree in 1965 from the University of Babes-Bolyai, Cluj and the Romanian National Academy of Sciences. He was a Group Leader at the Pharmacochemical Research Institute in Romania until 1968, when he was offered an R. A. Welch Fellowship at the University of Texas in Austin, where he worked in the field of theoretical organic chemistry with Dr. Michael J. S. Dewar, the first Robert A. Welch Research Chair. In 1972 he became a Senior Research Scientist at ALZA Laboratories in Lawrence, Kansas, which later became INTERx Research Corporation, where he was Director of Research, as well as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Kansas until 1978.

Among many honors, Dr. Bodor is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American College of Clinical Pharmacology. He is also an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Chemical Society and the Panhellenic Society of Pharmacists. Dr. Bodor was named the 1984 "Florida Scientist of the Year" and received the first AAPS Research Achievement Award in Medicinal and Natural Product Chemistry in 1988, as well as the APhA Research Achievement Award in Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry in 1989. In 1994 he was named the first recipient of the Nagai Foundation Tokyo International Fellowship. He was named by the American Chemical Society as the 1996 recipient of the Leo Friend Award in recognition of his article entitled, "Design of Biologically Safer Chemicals," published in Chemtech, October 1995. The AACP selected Dr. Bodor as the recipient of the 1997 Volwiler Research Achievement Award. In April 2000, he was named the V. Ravi Chandran Professor in Drug Design and Targeting of the UF College of Pharmacy, the first recipient of this endowed professorship. In February 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation. An honorary Doctor of Science degree was conferred upon Dr. Bodor by the University of Florida in 2005. In 2007, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists awarded Dr. Bodor with the Distinguished Pharmaceutical Scientist Award. Dr. Bodor was inducted in to the American Chemical Society’s Hall of Fame, Medicinal Chemistry Division in August 2012. Additionally, he was named to the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame in 2020. He is an inaugural member (inducted in 2020) of the Academy of Science, Engineering & Medicine of Florida (ASEM-FL). Dr. Bodor received the title “Graduate Research Professor Emeritus” upon his retirement from the University of Florida in 2003 and remains an active part of its College of Pharmacy through, among other things, a Distinguished Professorship named the Nicholas Bodor Professor in Drug Discovery (established in 2007) and the Nicholas Bodor Distinguished Lectureship (introduced in 2014).

In addition to the honors above, Dr. Bodor has received the highest levels of recognition from his home country of Hungary for his scientific achievements and leadership of the Budapest-based Institute for Drug Research. In 1989 he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the Technical University of Budapest, and then was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa degree from the Medical University of Debrecen in 1990. In 1995 he was elected to the Hungarian National Academy of Sciences. Ferenc Madl, (then) President of Hungary, awarded Dr. Bodor the Gold Cross of Merit of the Hungarian Republic in 2004. In 2010 he received the prestigious Fabinyi Prize of the Hungarian Chemical Society, which is given to scientists living outside Hungary whose outstanding scientific accomplishment have contributed to the reputation of the HCS. In August 2010 at the national celebration of Hungary’s over 1,000 years’ statehood and its canonized first king, St. Stephen, Dr. Bodor was awarded at the Hungarian Parliament, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, a prestigious award of civil merit. Dr. Bodor is also the 2022 recipient of the Arany János Lifetime Achievement Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the highest award for a Hungarian scientist living abroad, in recognition of his lifetime body of work in the sciences. In 2024 the NOVOFER Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences presented Dr. Bodor with the Gábor Dénes Lifetime Achievement Award (named after the Nobel Prize winning discoverer of the hologram), which honors those who have pioneered scientific innovations and their development into important practical applications.