Stefan Jentsch (29 May 1955 in Berlin) is a German cell biologist. He is a director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. He is known for his pioneer work in the field of protein modifications by ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like modifiers.
Jentsch studied biology at the Free University of Berlin, where he also obtained his Diplom in 1979. Then he completed his Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin in 1983.
After his Ph.D., he joined the laboratory of Alexander Varshavsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1988 he cam back to Germany and became a junior group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tübingen in 1988 and then professor at the Center of Molecular Biology (ZMBH), University of Heidelberg in 1993. Since 1998 he became a director of Department of Molecular Cell Biology, the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried.