A Road Less Travelled

Throughout his career, Dr. Grant Jensen has been willing to walk the road less traveled. In early 2020, Jensen stood at the crossroads of two divergent paths. One would allow him to continue to lead a cutting-edge research team at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The other would give Jensen the opportunity to make a broader, more lasting difference in the lives of faculty and countless students. Fortunately, the Lord continued to reach out in personal, but unmistakable ways to help Jensen see the choice from an eternal perspective, one that would help him choose the road less traveled and become the new dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

For the past eighteen years, Jensen’s professional path immersed him in the molecular architecture of microbial cells as head of the Jensen laboratory research team at Caltech. When it comes to his research, Jensen has already learned that being sensitive to the Spirit allowed him to forge his own direction—a path which ultimately led him and his research team to unchartered discoveries. Unlike other scientists who generally begin their research with a formal hypothesis, Jensen’s journey of developing the field of cryotomography-ET (cryo-ET) started with the notion that if scientists could see the whole cell, they would more clearly understand how it functioned.

As a result, Jensen and his research team decided “to take pictures of cells like nobody’s taken before,” he commented, “and sure enough, all kinds of things were inside cells that people didn’t know about!” Jensen’s team has been credited with being the first to use correlated light microscopy and cryo-ET to identify subcellular objects and produce 3D images of them at the microscopic level. “We take cells, put them in the electron microscope, and take pictures of them as we tilt them. Then we put all these pictures together into three-dimensional reconstructions,” Jensen explained.

Jensen’s work with cryo-ET has produced phenomenal discoveries, such as new cytoskeletal filaments that help organize and give shape to cells; flagellar motors that allow bacteria to swim; and within the thin tubes of the endoplasmic reticulum, a left-handed double helix! Jensen's work lays the groundwork for other scientists to make biochemistry discoveries. It could ultimately lead to medical treatment applications like creating new species of bacteria with specific abilities such as curing disease, cleaning up toxic waste, or capturing sunlight to produce fuel.

To date, Jensen has nearly 200 publications about his work with cryo-ET and over 10,000 citations pertaining to his innovative research. One of his most recent projects is the production of a digital book consisting of hundreds of images from his lab’s most compelling findings. Before becoming a world-renowned researcher, however, Jensen had to face another crossroad. He had to decide which area to concentrate in while pursuing his doctorate in biophysics from Stanford University. When he heard scientist Roger Kornberg speak about his research using an electron microscope to take pictures of the protein complex that reads DNA, the Spirit confirmed which direction Jensen should pursue--the first step on the road that would lead him to BYU.

Jensen soon came to realize that cryo-ET is “the happy union of a lot of things I love,” he explained. “There’s a lot of physics involved in how electron microscopes work, for example, and there is an enormous amount of image processing that needs to be done which involves a lot of math and programming.” As his work immersed him in these different fields, Jensen kept one goal in mind: to try to understand how “these amazing macromolecular machines make cells work.” For him, cryo-ET was the perfect combination and an answer to which direction his career path should take.

But Jensen’s passion for science began long before his time at Stanford and Caltech. Growing up in Los Alamos, a small government town in New Mexico with one McDonald’s and a nuclear development lab, Jensen was surrounded by physicists. Describing the effect this had on him, Jensen recalled that, as a child, he had always thought he was going to be a physicist “like everybody else.” When Jensen was pursuing his undergraduate degree at BYU, he decided to go back to his roots and chose to major in physics and math. Jensen is especially grateful for every opportunity he had to attend BYU devotionals with other young people who shared the same values, and for professors who unapologetically shared their testimony as he pursued his education in the sciences. Jensen fondly recalled that, “they helped me develop a sound strategy to simultaneously learn about science and religion because wherever and whenever we discover truth, our faith can stand strong.” The combination of inspired secular and religious training has made all the difference for Jensen’s career.

After finishing his PhD at Stanford, Jensen completed a post-doctorate at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. Since then, Jensen has worked solely at Caltech. But after nearly two decades at Caltech, Jensen had the distinct and repeated impression that more was expected of him—that who he was and what he was doing was not good enough—and that he should stop praying for professional success as he saw it and start praying for the Lord’s will to be done in his life. Not long after that, BYU contacted him about the Dean position. Jensen knew that choosing to leave a prestigious position at one of the world’s most competitive research facilities was a decision most scientists would likely balk at.

When the opportunity to return to BYU presented itself, Jensen realized that it was time to act on an impression he received when he was an undergraduate. He recalled that while he was a student, he had the thought that someday he would like to contribute as a faculty member or leader at BYU. “That thought has been kicking around in the back of my mind,” he commented. Even as an undergrad, Jensen knew that such impressions could only come to fruition if he continued to walk the road the Lord wanted him to take.

As Jensen contemplated how he could contribute to BYU’s divine mandate, “precious, impactful signals came,” he said. In the process, Jensen more fully recognized the vital role BYU is playing and needs to continue to play in the growth of the Lord’s kingdom. More than ever, Jensen appreciates how unique BYU is. “BYU prepares students for their careers while strengthening their testimonies and commitment to the gospel,” he said. That’s why Jensen chose to invest the second half of his career building the kingdom of God by helping to fulfill the mission of BYU. As a result, Jensen willingly took the road less traveled when he decided to leave his prestigious research position at Caltech to serve as the new dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. “My colleagues were astonished,” Jensen remarked. “My decision was totally baffling from their point of view.” But the road he needed to travel was crystal clear from the Lord’s point of view and helped to clarify some of his goals as the new dean.

“As a college, my goal is to offer the best undergraduate education in our fields so no one has to choose between the spiritual and cultural benefits of a BYU experience and the academic benefits of somewhere else.” Jensen knows this mission requires a world-class faculty full of faith—exactly what BYU has. “There is no other place with a higher concentration of people trying to live the gospel,” Jensen mused. When he walks around campus, Jensen is touched by the impression he gets that every student is a part of his family (indeed, two of his children are current undergraduate students!). “We all have so much in common,” he said.

Life is often full of difficult choices, but Jensen concluded that, “If the Lord is going to direct His church to own and operate a university, I’m honored and excited for the chance to help it thrive.” Jensen is confident that if he continues to ask which path the Lord wants him to take, he will be guided to find the right direction both for himself and the college, even if it might sometimes be the road less traveled.

By Lauren Nelson