Dr. Masashi Kawabori is a board-certified cardiac surgery/heart and lung transplantation surgeon and a recognized clinical researcher. As an associate professor in the Division of Cardiac Surgery at Tufts University in Boston, he combined a busy clinical practice with service as the division’s research director for five years.

He followed a rigorous path of cardiac surgery residency training at several hospitals in his native Japan, which included three years in cardiac surgery at Yamato Seiwa Hospital in Kanagawa and at Tokyo Bay Medical Center in Chiba. He also served a year devoted to cardiovascular surgery at Kameda Medical Center in Chiba.

Following his residency training, Dr. Kawabori came to the United States in 2014 to serve as the advanced cardiac surgery fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He broadened his surgical training into heart/lung transplantation and mechanical circulatory support (MCS) in a fellowship at the Texas Heart Institute at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

His passion for research and education is reflected in his published research and his service on the editorial boards of leading peer-reviewed journals such as The Annals of Thoracic Surgery and the ASAIO Journal. In fact, The Annals of Thoracic Surgery named Dr. Kawabori reviewer of the year for adult cardiac surgery in 2021.

As an educator, Dr. Kawabori has mentored several medical students and residents in their personal research projects. In addition to his surgical practice at UK HealthCare, Dr. Kawabori will work in collaboration with Dr. Dongfang Wang in the Artificial Organ Laboratory in the Department of Surgery on developing new types of MCS support for heart/lung failure.

Faculty Rank