Karl Lenhard Rudolph is a German aging researcher, Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and former scientific director of the Leibniz Institute for Aging Research (FLI) in Jena.

After school in Göttingen, Rudolph studied medicine at the Georg August University of Göttingen. He completed his medical studies in 1997 with his license to practice medicine. This was followed by clinical training in internal medicine and a two and a half year research stay at the Albert Einstein College in New York City and at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. In 2001, Rudolph returned to Germany and became a  research group leader at the Hannover Medical School - supported by the Emmy Noether Program and a Heisenberg Professorship from the DFG. During this time, Rudolph completed his habilitation in experimental gastroenterology. In 2007 Rudolph accepted an appointment at the University of Ulm  There he was director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine and head of the Max Planck Research Group on Stem Cell Aging. From 2012 to 2017 he was the scientific director of the Leibniz Institute for Aging Research - Fritz Lipmann Institute e. V. (FLI) and Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, where he now researches and teaches.