Jeffrey Bumpous has served as executive vice president for health affairs and dean for the University of Louisville School of Medicine since July 2023. He also holds the J. Samuel Bumgardner Endowed Professorship in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Communicative Disorders at the UofL School of Medicine.

Born at Martin Army Hospital in Fort Benning, Georgia, Bumpous is a graduate of Paducah Tilghman High School in Paducah, Kentucky. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and chemistry, Magna Cum Laude, from Morehead State University. While enrolled as a medical student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and graduated in 1988. Following his fellowship in Advanced Head and Neck and Skull Base Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, Bumpous entered academic medicine at the University of Louisville in 1994.

At UofL, he established a multidisciplinary head and neck cancer clinic and tumor board – the first of its kind in Kentucky and one of the first in the nation. As director of the then Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, he expanded the head and neck service at the University of Louisville and over the course of a decade, led the transition of the Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery into the first Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Communicative Disorders. In 2015, he became the inaugural chair of the newly created department. Today the department includes more than 25 faculty members, more than 100 learners and is ranked in the Blue Ridge Rankings for Research in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery with a full compendium of educational, research and clinical services. 

Bumpous has held numerous leadership roles across the medical school, university and the UofL Health system, including chair of the Commission on Cancer, Cancer Committee; secretary and treasurer of University of Louisville Physicians; chair of the Board of Directors of University Medical Center; and co-chair of the 2020-2026 University of Louisville Strategic Plan.

Nationally and internationally, he has served in multiple leadership positions, most notably past president of the Society of University Otolaryngologists, past president of the Association of Academic Departments of Otolaryngology-HNS, current president of the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and incoming member of the Administrative Board for the Council of Deans at the Association of American Medical Colleges. He has served as associate editor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Surgery and Laryngoscope. In addition, he also has served in leadership roles in the American Academy of Otolaryngology, the American Head and Neck Society, the Kentucky Society of Otolaryngology, the Louisville Otolaryngologic Society and other professional organizations.

Bumpous has been an invited lecturer at multiple U.S. medical schools and an invited lecturer on head and neck surgical topics internationally in Korea, Canada and India. Bumpous is married to his wife Anne and has three daughters (Erin, Molly and Claire) and a son-in-law, Phillip.