Leonard R. Johnson received a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Michigan and then trained with Dr. Morton I. Grossman at UCLA. He spent 17 years as a Professor of Physiology at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston before moving to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center as the Thomas A. Gerwin Professor and Chairman of the Department of Physiology. He is the author or coauthor of over 250 papers on gastrointestinal physiology and holds an NIH MERIT Award. Currently he is the Vice Chancellor for Research at Tennessee.