Steven Shuken, Ph.D.

Steven Shuken, Ph.D., is a chemical biologist and mass spectrometrist whose work sits at the interface of neurobiology, organic synthesis, and proteomics. In January 2027, he will join the HKUST Division of Life Science and Department of Chemistry as an Assistant Professor.

Steven has undergone postdoctoral training in the Gygi Laboratory in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School and in the Lehtinen Laboratory in the Department of Pathology, where he develops methods for targeted, high-throughput mass spectrometry-based proteomics. His postdoctoral work has focused on making it easier to quantify site-specific protein modifications, including proteolytic cleavage sites, phosphorylation sites, reactive cysteines, and compound-protein interactions. He has applied these technologies to studies of choroid plexus and cerebrospinal fluid proteomics in development and aging.

Steven earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Stanford University, working in the Wyss-Coray Laboratory in the Department of Neurology at Stanford and the Burns Laboratory in the Department of Chemistry at Stanford. His doctoral and earlier research combined mass spectrometry-based proteomics, organic synthesis, and biostatistics to study brain aging, Alzheimer's disease, unusual lipids, and chemical tools for biological measurements.