His Research lies in the broad fields of Programming Systems and Machine Learning, with an emphasis on enabling extreme-scale data-intensive computing and intelligent computing through innovations in compilers,runtime systems, and Machine Learning algorithms. As a pioneer in manycore and GPU code compilation and optimizations, his research has influenced the development of modern heterogeneous programming systems and machine learning systems. His contributions to the field have been recognized through awards such as the DOE Early Career Award, NSF CAREER Award, Google Faculty Research Award, and IBM CAS Faculty Fellow Award. He was honored with University Faculty Scholars Award "as an emerging academic leader who turns research into solutions to society’s most pressing issues". His research has been sponsored by NSF, DOE, and NIH. He is an ACM Distinguished Member, ACM Distinguished Speaker, and a senior member of IEEE.

In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Shen co-founded CoCoPIE Inc., a company dedicated to enhancing AI deployment. He has been a consultant or member of the advisory boards to several leading IT companies, including Intel, Microsoft, Huawei, Cisco, Meta.