Janos Zempleni, Willa Cather Professor of Molecular Nutrition with the Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences, has been named a 2025 Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition. The designation is the highest honor bestowed by the organization, “honoring individuals for their significant contributions and outstanding lifetime achievements in the field of nutrition.”
Selection as a Distinguished Fellow of the ASN “underscores the Society’s dedication to recognizing excellence and fostering advancements in the field of nutrition,” the organization said.
“I am humbled by being elected a member of the 2025 Class of Distinguished Fellows of the American Society for Nutrition,” said Zempleni, who also is director of the Nebraska Center for the Prevention of Obesity Diseases. “ASN has been a constant source of inspiration ever since I joined this group of thought leaders in nutrition.”
Zempleni has pioneered studies of extracellular vesicles and their RNA cargos in milk and their biological activities with species boundaries, across species boundaries and across kingdom boundaries (animal to bacteria). One of his recent research projects focused on milk as the vehicle delivering cancer-fighting therapeutics to the brain.
Over his career, Zempleni has secured more than $60 million in external research funding and published more than 170 peer-reviewed research articles, review articles, books and book chapters. He was listed among the top 2% of the most cited researchers worldwide over the course of career and during a single year (2022-23).
The American Association for the Advancement of Sciences named him a Fellow in 2015, the same year he received the Omtvedt Innovation Award from the university’s Institute of Agricultural and Natural Resources.
Zempleni and the other 2025 ASN Distinguished Fellows have demonstrated “lifetime dedication and contributions that have shaped the field of nutrition science,” said ASN President Sarah Booth, the center director at Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. “Their groundbreaking work not only advances our discipline but also inspires future generations of scientists, clinicians and scholars committed to improving global health.”
The ASN Foundation “is incredibly grateful for their steadfast dedication to advancing our scientific field and the Society,” said Paul Coates, chair of the ASN Foundation Board of Trustees and past director of the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health.
ASN will honor Zempleni and other ASN Distinguished Fellows during the organization’s conference NUTRITION 2025, to be held May 31 to June 3 in Orlando, Florida.
