Robert J. Cousins holds the Boston Family Chair in Nutrition, and is Director of the Center for Nutritional Sciences and in Joinst Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Florida.  Research activities span the molecular and cell biology of zinc absorption, metabolism and function, nutritional genomics and technologies for nutritional status assessment.  His laboratory has produced over 65 graduate students and postdoctoral associates in nutritional sciences and biochemistry.  In his area of research, the ISI (Current Contents^®) ranks him among the top one‑half of one percent of the most highly cited authors. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.