He is director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) and honorary professor at the University of Cologne.

From 1985 to 1988 he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Caltech and then as a research assistant at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville.

[7] As Founding Chair of the Collaboration Board of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), Zensus has coordinated international efforts to map supermassive black holes in the universe.

[8] Using RadioAstron and earth bound radio telescopes, Zensus was part of a team that imaged the origin region of the relativistic plasma jet around the supermassive black hole of the nucleus of the galaxy NGC 1275 (Perseus A).

[11] Through the technical developments, observations, imaging efforts and scientific contributions of his group, and through the coordination of the international EHT observation consortium, Zensus contributed decisively to the image of a supermassive black hole in Messier 87, which was published in April 2019 and is the first direct picture of a black hole.