Cătălin Drulă (; born 2 May 1981) is a

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

n politician who served as the president of the

Save Romania Union The Save Romania Union (, USR) is a Liberalism, liberal List of political parties in Romania, political party in Romania. It is the fourth-largest party in the Parliament of Romania, holding 40 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (Romania), Chamber ...

(USR)

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

, until his resignation in 2024 (officially since 10 July 2022 onwards and previously

acting Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode. Acting involves a broad range of sk ...

/ ad interim for 5 months before), and as an incumbent member of the

Romanian Chamber of Deputies The Chamber of Deputies () is the lower house in Romania's Bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Romania, parliament. It has 312 regular seats to which Chamber of Deputies, deputies are elected by direct popular vote using party-list proportiona ...

, elected as a deputy for

Timiș County Timiș () is a county (''județ'') of western Romania on the border with Hungary and Serbia, in the historical regions of Romania, historical region of Banat, with the county seat at Timișoara. It is the westernmost and the largest county in Ro ...

at the

2020 Romanian legislative election Parliamentary elections were held in Romania on 6 December 2020 to elect the 136 members of the Senate and the 330 constituent members of the Chamber of Deputies. While the Social Democratic Party (PSD) remained the largest political party in t ...

. From 23 December 2020, he served as the Minister of Transport in the Cîțu Cabinet, until his resignation registered on 7 September 2021. According to USR MP Emanuel Ungureanu, he could likely be the presidential candidate of USR for the forthcoming

2024 Romanian presidential election Presidential elections were held in Romania on 24 November 2024. A Two-round system, second round was due to be held on 8 December 2024 as no candidate achieved an absolute majority in the first round. However, on 6 December 2024 the Constituti ...

. Since 7 February 2022, he has been serving as the ad interim president of the USR, as a result of the resignation of

Dacian Cioloș Dacian Julien Cioloș (; born 27 July 1969) is a Romanian Agronomy, agronomist who served as Prime Minister of Romania from November 2015 to January 2017. He previously served as Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Rural Development (Romania), A ...

. Following the poor results of the

United Right Alliance United Right Alliance (, ADU) was a centre-right electoral alliance that was formed to compete in the 2024 Romanian parliamentary election. It opposed the incumbent National Coalition for Romania (CNR) government. History On 14 December 2023, Sa ...

in the

2024 Romanian local elections Local elections were held in Romania on 9 June 2024. They were the eighth Romanian Revolution, post-1989 local elections in the country. The previous 2020 Romanian local elections, Romanian local elections in 2020 were won by the National Libera ...

and the 2024 European Parliament election in Romania on 9 June 2024, he announced his resignation from the leadership of USR.

Biography

Born in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

, Drulă went to high school at the city's Tudor Vianu National College of Computer Science (1995–1999). He pursued his studies at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, graduating in 2002 with a degree in

computer engineering Computer engineering (CE, CoE, or CpE) is a branch of engineering specialized in developing computer hardware and software. It integrates several fields of electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science. Computer engi ...

. After spending a year at the

Grenoble Institute of Technology The Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP) (''Institut polytechnique de Grenoble'' , ''Groupe Grenoble INP'' and before INPG) is a French technological university system consisting of eight engineering and management schools. Grenoble I ...

on an exchange program, he obtained in 2005 an MS degree in computer science from the University of Toronto, with thesis "Fast and Energy Efficient Neighbour Discovery for Opportunistic Networking with Bluetooth".

References

Living people 1981 births Politicians from Bucharest Leaders of political parties in Romania Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Romania) Save Romania Union politicians Ministers of transport of Romania Tudor Vianu National College of Computer Science alumni University of Toronto alumni {{Romania-politician-stub