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Dr. Kenichi (Ken) Fujise is chief of cardiology at University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, Texas, where he is also professor of medicine and biochemistry and molecular biology. Dr. Fujise helped the cardiology division at UTMB recover from Hurricane Ike in 2008.

Dr. Fujise was born in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving his MD from the Kyoto University School of Medicine in Kyoto, his training included an internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, as well as an interventional cardiology fellowship and research fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. 

Dr. Fujise's research has been supported by the American Heart Association and National Institutes of Health. His research focuses on fortilin, a new antiapoptotic molecule discovered in his laboratory in 2000. His laboratory is the first to report that fortilin is an antiapoptotic molecule, and more recently, his laboratory found that fortilin is abundantly present in atherosclerotic plaques. He has published over 50 research papers, and his invention in fortilin also led to a patent.