Dr. Fenske has worked in the area of hematologic malignancies for nearly 20 years. He graduated summa cum laude from Marquette University (B.S. in Biology), and then completed medical school and residency in internal medicine at University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with a master's degree in cell and molecular biology. He then completed a hematology/ oncology fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis/ Barnes Hospital, with a clinical focus in leukemia and lymphoma and laboratory work focusing on leukemia. He then joined the faculty of the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) in 2005 as an Associate Professor, eventually achieving the rank of full Professor in 2018. During his tenure at MCW his clinical and research efforts were focused on Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and related disorders such as chronic lymphocytic lymphoma as well as other hematologic malignancies - including all lines of therapy from newly diagnosed to multiply relapsed, with a special focus on transplant and cellular therapies including novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies.

He recently accepted a position with the Sarah Cannon transplant and cell therapy group at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio in early 2025, where he is focusing on advanced therapies for hematologic malignancies. Dr. Fenske has published extensively with over 140 original peer-reviewed research publications and 28 review articles/ book chapters. He has served on the National Cancer Institute's Lymphoma Steering Committee since 2016, and was a co-chair of the Lymphoma Working Committee for the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research from 2015-2020. In addition, he has served as national study chair for the U.S. intergroup frontline mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) trial (ECOG4151), which utilized MRD for a risk-adapted approach in MCL, as well as co-chair for the Alliance 051301/ BMT-CTN 1201 trial in relapsed and refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. His current research interests include the use of highly sensitive minimal residual disease assessment to risk-adapt therapy, as well as novel CAR-T and immune therapy approaches to treating hematologic malignancies.