Sichen (Susan) Shao, Ph.D.

Sichen (Susan) Shao, Ph.D., joined Harvard Medical School in 2016. Susan received her Ph.D. in biological sciences from the NIH graduate partnerships program with Johns Hopkins University. She then performed postdoctoral work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. In 2024, she became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

The Shao Lab studies cellular mechanisms that surveil different steps of protein biosynthesis to regulate gene expression and maintain protein homeostasis. How quality control factors distinguish rare aberrant products from similar biosynthetic intermediates is a fundamental problem in biomedical science. The Shao Lab biochemically reconstitutes quality control pathways that act on ribosomes during protein synthesis and that sort membrane proteins to different organelles. Combining these experimental systems with mechanistic and structural approaches generates molecular-level insights into physiological processes essential for cell survival, proliferation, and differentiation.