Dr. Semenza received undergraduate training (A.B.) in Biology at Harvard College; M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania; Pediatrics residency training at Duke University Medical Center; and postdoctoral training in Medical Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he has spent his entire career. He is currently the C. Michael Armstrong Professor at Johns Hopkins with appointments in Pediatrics, Medicine, Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Biological Chemistry, and the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine.

Since 2003 he has served as Founding Director of the Vascular Program in the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering. Dr. Semenza's laboratory identified hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1), a transcription factor that allows cells to respond to changes in oxygen availability. The purification of HIF-1 and isolation of its coding sequences in 1995 opened the field of oxygen biology to molecular analysis and has revealed major roles for HIF-1 in many developmental, physiological, and pathological processes including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Dr. Semenza serves on the editorial boards of Antioxidants and Redox Signaling, Cancer Research, Cardiovascular Research, Circulation Research, Experimental Physiology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, and Oncogene.

He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Molecular Medicine. He has been elected to the Society for Pediatric Research, American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Sciences, USA.