MSc in Chemical Engineering and PhD (1989) in Biochemical Engineering from the Danish Technical University (DTU). Fulbright visiting professor at MIT in 1995-1996. Professor at DTU in 1998. In 2008 he was recruited as Professor to Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. In 2015 he was founding Head of the Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, which now encompass more than 200 people.
Jens Nielsen was also a co-founder of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability that now have more than 300 people affiliated, for which he served as CSO 2013-2018. From 2019 CEO of the BioInnovation Institute in Denmark, which is a new institute financed by USD500M that fosters translational research and support new spin-out companies in life sciences. He has trained more than 280 scientists in his research group and published >850 publications that have been cited more than 100,000 times (current H-factor 147). Inventor of >50 patents and founder of seven biotech companies.