David R. Jacobs, Jr., PhD (Mathematical Statistics, 1971, The Johns Hopkins University) has been on the faculty of the School of Public Health, University of Minnesota since 1974. He holds a Mayo Professorship in Public Health. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association and the American College of Nutrition. He was Deputy Editor of the British Journal of Nutrition (2006-2011), Associate Editor of Journal of Nutrition (2015-2017) and is on the editorial boards of Circulation, Clinical Chemistry, JAHA, Preventive Medicine, and other journals.
He has over 1100 articles on various topics concerning the epidemiology of chronic diseases and their risk factors, including the epidemiology of specific molecules, and particularly those relating to cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. He has a great interest in diet, particularly focusing on health effects of foods and diet patterns. He has published the idea of food synergy, that the nutrient constituents of foods and diet patterns act in concert with each, thereby having different health effects than does any one constituent in isolation.