Dr. Shen is associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. She received her PhD in molecular biology from the University of Virginia in 1995 studying mechanisms of alternative splicing in Drosophila. As a postdoctoral fellow with Susumu Tonegawa at MIT, she began the investigation of the molecular basis of Alzheimer’s disease using mouse genetic approaches. Since 1998, she has been directing a molecular neurobiology laboratory at Harvard Medical School whose major research interests focus on the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The laboratory uses genomic, proteomic, genetic, biochemical, cell biological, imaging, electrophysiological and behavioral approaches to investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in neurodegenerative diseases.