Jeffrey Jensen

Jeffrey Jensen is a Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Arizona State University (ASU), affiliated with the School of Life Sciences, the Center for Evolution and Medicine, and the Biodesign Center for Mechanisms of Evolution. He holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Cornell University (2002–2006) and completed postdoctoral training as an NSF Biological Informatics Fellow at UCSD and UC Berkeley (2007–2009). His research focuses on computational population genetics, developing statistical methodologies to study evolutionary processes and analyze genomic data from natural and viral populations.

Dr. Jensen’s work integrates theory and computational tools to quantify evolutionary forces such as selection, mutation, and demographic history. He leads the Jensen Lab, which emphasizes genomic analysis of species like primates (e.g., aye-ayes, rhesus macaques) and pathogens like cytomegalovirus and influenza. Notable contributions include studies on recombination landscapes, demographic inference, and drug resistance evolution in viruses.

Key research themes include the impact of mutation and recombination rates on demographic models, the role of skewed offspring distributions in viral evolution, and the application of evolutionary baseline models to human and pathogen populations. His lab also investigates the evolutionary dynamics of seasonal camouflage in snowshoe hares and the genomic history of ancient human populations.

Dr. Jensen has published extensively in journals like Genetics, Molecular Biology and Evolution, and PLOS Pathogens, with a focus on genomic scans for selection, population demography, and computational methods. He teaches courses in evolutionary biology, genomics, and population genetics at ASU.