Dr. Weida Tong received his Ph.D. in polymer chemistry from Fudan University (Shanghai, China) in 1989 and completed his postdoctoral fellowship in computational chemistry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1996. He then joined NCTR to develop a toxicological knowledge base for safety evaluation. In 2002, Dr. Tong became Director of a newly formed Center of Excellence for Bioinformatics (formerly Toxicoinformatics). More recently he was named the Director of the Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics. He also holds several adjunct positions at universities, including an associate professorship at Rutgers University in Princeton, New Jersey and a full professorship at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

His research division is involved in developing bioinformatics methodologies and standards to support FDA research and regulation for regulatory and translational sciences. Three of the most visible projects from his group are:

1. Development of the FDA bioinformatics system, ArrayTrack™ suite, to support FDA review and research on pharmacogenomics.
2. Leading the effort on the Microarray Quality Control (also known as MAQC) consortium to develop standards for translational science and personalized medicine.
3. Development of a Liver Toxicity Knowledge Base (also known as LTKB) for drug safety.

In addition, his research division specializes in molecular modeling and quantitative structure-activity relationships with specific emphasis on the prediction of endocrine disruptors and human leukocyte antigen (HLA) -related adverse drug reactions. Dr. Tong has published over 230 papers and book chapters, and has routinely been invited to present at national and international conferences.