Dr. Ushijima is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), where his lab researches the development of probiotic treatments for disease and habitat restoration and the molecular mechanisms for microbe-microbe antagonism.

Ushijima received his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, working on bacterial pathogens that infect corals. His work focused on novel coral pathogens with an emphasis on the pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus, which infects a variety of corals and marine invertebrates. He continued as a postdoc at Oregon State University, working on bacterial oyster pathogens and probiotics. He was then awarded the George Burch Research Fellowship to work at the Smithsonian Marine Station studying stony coral tissue loss disease and was one of the lead investigators for the Coral Health and Marine Probiotics (CHAMP) Lab. During his time at the Smithsonian, he worked on developing probiotics to combat the outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) spreading throughout the Caribbean. In fall 2020, he accepted an assistant professor position at UNCW.