Dr. Shen received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Sichuan Agricultural University in 1982 and 1985, respectively. He moved to Arizona State University to obtain his PhD, working in the lab of Professor Wim Vermaas in the Department of Botany, where he studied the roles of different subunits in Photosystem II. Dr. Shen successfully earned his PhD in 1993. He then moved to The Pennsylvania State University to perform a postdoctoral position in the lab of Don Bryant in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Aside from a brief hiatus to work in an industrial position in Boston, MA between 2011 and 2013, Dr. Shen worked at Penn State for more than 27 years, investigating photosynthetic cyanobacteria.