The University of Vermont College of Medicine has announced the appointment of Gordon L. Jensen, M.D., Ph.D., as senior associate dean for research. Jensen will also serve as professor of medicine and professor of nutrition and food sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He will join the College of Medicine later this year, succeeding Russell Tracy, Ph.D., professor of pathology and biochemistry and former senior associate dean for research and academic affairs, who has served as interim senior associate dean for research since July 2014. 

Jensen joins UVM from Penn State University, where since 2007 he has been professor and head of the Department of Nutritional Sciences – one of the very top nutrition departments in the country – as well as professor of medicine at Penn State College of Medicine and Hershey Medical Center. From 1999 to 2007, he served as professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Human Nutrition. Jensen holds a Doctorate in Nutritional Biochemistry and an M.D. from Cornell University, and completed residency training in internal medicine and fellowship training in clinical nutrition at New England Deaconess Hospital (now Beth Israel Deaconess) and Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining Vanderbilt, he was director of the section of nutrition Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa.

Nationally, Jensen is a past president of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN) and a past-chair of the Association of Nutrition Programs and Departments. He is also a past-president of the American Society for Nutrition. A widely recognized nutrition researcher and educator, he has served on advisory panels, study sections or work groups for the National Institutes of Health and the American Dietetic Association, and served two terms on the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine. He has also served on several leading nutrition journal’s editorial boards.

Board-certified in nutrition and internal medicine, Jensen has clinical expertise in adult nutrition support interventions, outpatient clinics for malnourished patients, and high-risk obesity management. Active in research collaborations and mentorship, he has investigated geriatric nutrition concerns, obesity and function in older persons, and nutrition and inflammation, and has served as co-director of the Penn State Childhood Obesity Prevention Training Program and co-director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute KL2 Training Program. The author of more than 180 journal articles, reviews, and book chapters, Jensen is the recipient of the 2014 Jonathan Rhoads Lecture, the most prestigious award of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. He also developed a required curriculum in clinical nutrition for medical students at Vanderbilt, and was director of a successful Nutrition Support Fellowship Program at Geisinger.