Roy A. Jensen, M.D. earned his bachelor鈥檚 degree in Biology and Chemistry from Pittsburg State University in 1980. He graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1984, and remained there to complete a residency in Anatomic Pathology and a Surgical Pathology fellowship under the direction of Dr. David L. Page. Following his clinical training he accepted a biotechnology training fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Dr. Stuart Aaronson. He returned to Vanderbilt in 1991 and was appointed an assistant professor in the Departments of Pathology and Cell Biology. In 1993 Dr. Jensen was appointed as an investigator in the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and assumed the management of the Human Tissue Acquisition and Pathology Shared Resource.  Dr. Jensen was promoted to associate professor of Pathology and Cell Biology in 1996, and was appointed as an associate professor of Cancer Biology in 2001.

In 2004, Dr. Jensen returned home to Kansas and was appointed the William R. Jewell, M.D. Distinguished Kansas Masonic Professor, the director of The University of Kansas Cancer Center, the director of the Kansas Masonic Cancer Research Institute, professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He also holds appointments as a professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Kansas-Lawrence and as professor in Cancer Biology at The University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Jensen is currently serving as president of the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) and is a member of several scientific and professional societies including the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Cell Biology, the American Society for Investigative Pathology, and the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology. He currently has over 150 scientific publications and has lectured widely on the clinical and molecular aspects of breast cancer pathology. Dr. Jensen's research interests are focused on understanding the function of BRCA1 and BRCA2 and their role in breast and ovarian neoplasia; and in the characterization of premalignant breast disease both at the morphologic and molecular levels. His laboratory was instrumental in demonstrating the role of BRCA1 in the growth control of normal and malignant cells and in how loss of functional BRCA1 contributes to the development of breast cancer.

Since becoming director of The University of Kansas Cancer Center in 2004, he has recruited a world-class leadership team and successfully led that team in achieving designation for The University of Kansas Cancer Center as a National Cancer Institute designated cancer center.