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A native Californian, Dr. Jennifer F. Tseng earned degrees in English and biological sciences at Stanford, followed by an MD from UCSF. Dr. Tseng did a surgery residency and served as Super-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by a surgical oncology fellowship at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Tseng began her faculty career at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and UMass Memorial in 2005, completing her MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2007. Dr. Tseng was recruited to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) as Chief of Surgical Oncology in 2011 and rose to the rank of Professor of Surgery at Harvard, being the first woman to earn this distinction at BIDMC. In 2017, Dr Tseng was appointed as the James Utley Professor and Chair of Surgery at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and the Surgeon-in-Chief at Boston Medical Center (BMC). Dr. Tseng was the first woman and first nonwhite person to be Chair of Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief in Boston. At BMC/BU, Dr. Tseng accomplished ambitious objectives including leading her department to increased prominence, recruiting and sponsoring talented, diverse faculty and trainees, and improving the department’s clinical quality, research scholarship, and extramural funding.
Dr. Tseng is a surgical oncologist specializing in upper GI Surgery. Dr. Tseng founded the Surgical Outcomes Analysis & Research (SOAR) initiative in 2007 at UMass Chan, subsequently moving it to BIDMC and to BU/BMC. Dr Tseng is the immediate past Chair of the Board and Past President of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract (SSAT) and is a founder and Past President of the Society of Asian Academic Surgeons (SAAS). Dr. Tseng is a member of the American Board of Surgery (ABS) Council and immediate past chair of its research committee. She is a Director of the Complex General Surgical Oncology Board. Dr. Tseng is a deputy editor for JAMA Surgery and serves on numerous journal editorial boards. She is also involved in philanthropic and foundation work, serving as the medical advisor for the PRIA pancreatic cancer research foundation, as well as the Chair of the 2024 Lustgarten Foundation-American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Scientific Research Committee. Dr. Tseng has served as a board director and as an advisor for a number of corporate entities and has advocated at the state and national level for research and treatment of cancer and pancreatic disease, as well as for patient issues related to surgery. As of early 2024, as BU Professor Emerita, SOAR researcher/founding director, and principal of SOAR Enterprises LLC, Dr. Tseng has been focused on longitudinal work in health equity and advocacy, service to medical and philanthropic organizations, and several writing projects.