Qun Shen

Distinguished Alumnus 2004

• Ph.D. 1987, Physics, Purdue University

Qun Shen is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University. He has been responsible for many of the successful projects carried out at CHESS. He invented a method, based on multiple diffraction x-rays, to characterize all the parameters of an elliptically polarized x-ray beam, which has been used extensively in experiments based on magnetic scattering of x-rays.

His recent research focuses on an innovative reference-beam diffraction method that allows direct measurements of a large number of Bragg reflection phases in protein crystallography. This work has received independent funding from the National Institutes of Health. He is collaborating on this project with a team of the medical Foundation in Buffalo, led by Nobel laureate Dr. Herbert Hauptman. He has authored more than 80 articles in scientific journals and invited book chapters, and has given more than 60 invited lectures at professional seminars and conferences. He received the S.S. Sidhu Award from the Pittsburgh Diffraction Society for outstanding contributions to the field of diffraction physics.