Mogens Høgh Jensen Professor of Complex Systems and Biophysics, dr. scient. (D.Sc.),
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen

Member of Biocomplexity Group.

President, Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters. (until 2021).

Head of  BioNET (2005-2015), Co-Director of Center for Models of Life (2004-1014).

Office Telephone: +45 353 25371
Mobile: +45 28755371
Email: mhjensen@nbi.dk
Office: Kb-7, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø.


Summary of CV:

Published more than 230 scientific articles in refereed journals.
Given over 250 invited lectures at International Conferences.
17000 citations.
Most cited publication: 4620 citations, Physical Review A 33, 1141 (1986).
Author of 1 book (870 citations) and editor of two books.
H-index: ~ 55.
Supervisor for 45 Ph.D.-students, 32 post docs, and around 60 M.S. students.
Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters (from 2000).
Secretary General of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters (2012-2016).
President of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters (2016-2020).
Knighted by Queen Margrethe II (2017), knighted to first degree (2020).
Organizer or co-organizer of 36 international conferences/summer schools/workshops.
Associate Editor Physica A, Life and Quantitative Biology.


Summary of research interests:

We study complex phenomena in nature in a broad sense. In particular we have investigated chaos, fractals and oscillations in non-linear systems. With collaborators at the University of Chicago we introduced the multifractal formalism which has been applied to a large variety of systems in science and nature. A main interest has been to study intermittency in turbulence, in particular using shells models. We introduced the inverse structure functions in turbulence and have applied similar ideas to introduce inverse statistics on financial time series, discovering the asymmetry of financial markets. In recent years we have worked on genetic networks in particular relating to the important transcription factors p53, NF-kB and Wnt. These are fundamental regulators in DNA-repair, apoptosis and inflammation and show often oscillatory behavior. In this connection we study how oscillatory external stimuli might induce chaos and mode-locking inside cells. In particular we are interested in cases where Arnold tongues appear and their influence on biological properties. We have recently shown that condensates of repair proteins are formed around the danage sites. The oscillations of p53 are beneficial for avoiding Ostwald ripening thus ensuring optical repair processes. We also investigate the pathway of the WRN helicase and its relation to the p53 regulation. We are in particular interested in how temporal and spatial behaviors interact in genetic regulation, both inside cells and during tissue growth. We do research on population genetics of plankton and bacteria in strongly turbulent flows. In particular how the different species will out-compete each other due to the turbulent behavior. As an overall theme for our present research we are interested in complex behavior from small scales (cells) to large scales (oceans and atmosphere).


Mogens Høgh Jensen was in January 2011 awarded the prestigious Gunnar Randers Physics Prize of Norwegian Science. The prize was handed out by King Harald at a ceremony in Oslo, May 5, 2011.

The quotation says: For M.H. Jensen's groundbreaking basic research on complex matter systems. M.H. Jensen has delivered outstanding contributions to many problems in modern physics, especially concerning phase transitions and critical phenomena, as well as in the theory of chaos, turbulence and complex systems. His works have lead to increased fundamental understanding inside many areas of materials science, complex materials, and processes in biological systems.

Mogens Høgh Jensen