Florin Cofar
Florin Nicolae Cofar (born 11 November 1982) is a Romanian dentist, researcher, and entrepreneur working in aesthetic and digital dentistry. In 2015 he developed the RAW protocol, a method of restorative smile design based on NATURAL tooth morphology, and in 2016 he co-founded Smilecloud, an AI-assisted platform for dental treatment planning. The Swiss dental group Straumann acquired a 30 percent minority stake in Smilecloud in 2023.
Cofar practises at the Dentcof clinic in Timișoara, founded by his parents in 1989. He has lectured on digital dentistry in more than 30 countries and is co-author, with Eric Van Dooren and others, of the three-volume reference work Interdisciplinary Esthetic Dentistry: The Big Picture (Quintessence Publishing, 2024).
Early life and education
Cofar was born on 11 November 1982 in Romania. His parents, Ioan Cofar and Irina Cofar, both dentists, founded the Dentcof clinic in Timișoara in 1989; according to Forbes Romania, it was among the first private dental practices in the country with its own in-house laboratory.
He obtained a Doctor of Dental Medicine (DDS) degree from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy "Victor Babeș" in Timișoara in 2007. He subsequently undertook postgraduate studies in aesthetic dentistry at the New York University College of Dentistry (2010–2011) and a postgraduate course in strategic management at Harvard Business School (2012). He is enrolled in the Doctoral School of Dental Medicine at the Victor Babeș University.
Work and views
Cofar's clinical practice focuses on complex full-mouth rehabilitations combining orthodontics, implant dentistry, and minimally invasive restorations within a digitally integrated interdisciplinary workflow.
In a 2023 interview with Forbes Romania, Cofar described digitalisation as primarily a planning tool: the ability to preview a restorative result before treatment begins, in his view, forces clinicians to plan in detail and reduces errors downstream. He characterised aesthetics in dentistry as subjective and argued against the pursuit of a single universal standard of beauty, saying that "the natural is a balance of imperfections" and that natural-looking outcomes require the deliberate inclusion of minor asymmetries. This position is labelled "i'mperfect design" by the Dentcof clinic. In the same interview, Cofar compared his team's workflow to practices in architecture (for treatment planning) and aviation (for procedural protocols).
RAW protocol and Smilecloud
In 2015, Cofar developed the RAW protocol, a method of restorative treatment planning that uses natural tooth morphology as a reference. The protocol was published in 2017 in Quintessence of Dental Technology.
In 2016, Cofar co-founded Smilecloud together with Ioan Cofar, Belgian periodontist Eric Van Dooren, and a technical team led by Florin Sârghe with Cristian Diaconescu and Mihai Simonia. The company is based in Timișoara. The platform was tested in beta by approximately 500 users in 2018 and publicly launched on 14 March 2019. It uses patented AI technology to match patient photographs against biometric libraries of natural tooth shapes for 2D and 3D smile design. A 2024 peer-reviewed article in Dentistry Journal described Smilecloud as an artificial-intelligence-based platform that allows practitioners and patients to preview designs using natural teeth libraries. According to Forbes Romania, the software is used in more than 90 countries.
In May 2023, Smilecloud entered into a strategic partnership with Straumann Group, under which Straumann acquired a 30 percent minority stake in the company and the two companies agreed to integrate Smilecloud with Straumann's coDiagnostiX guided-surgery system.
Lecturing and publications
Cofar has lectured on digital dentistry and aesthetic rehabilitation internationally since 2011, in more than 30 countries. He has delivered guest lectures at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine.
He is co-author, with Eric Van Dooren, Victor Clavijo, Gustavo Giordani, and Venceslav Stankov, of Interdisciplinary Esthetic Dentistry: The Big Picture (Quintessence Publishing, 2024), a three-volume work covering fixed prosthetics, implantology, periodontics, and orthodontic integration. His peer-reviewed publications include a 2022 clinical report in the Journal of Esthetic and Restorative Dentistry and a 2024 study on the perception of AI-assisted smile design in Dentistry Journal. Earlier contributions to Quintessence of Dental Technology cover digital workflows for full-mouth rehabilitation, minimally invasive restoration, library-based design, and soft-tissue design around implants.