During his career, a number of special appointments attest to his international interests and distinction. He was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule, Zürich, in 1957. He served as a visiting professor at more than 10 international academic institutions, including the University of Paris (1964 and 1969), the Technical University of Vienna in 1977, the Institute of Space Sciences at the University of Tokyo in 1984–1985, and three universities in China. He was also an honorary professor at his alma mater, the Southeast University (formerly National Central University) in Nanjing, China. Dr. Shen was a consultant to the David Taylor Ship Research and Development Center of the U.S. Navy on matters concerning the seaworthiness of marine vessels in rough seas, the dynamics of giant helicopters with circulation-controlled rotors, and design modifications of aircraft for carrier landing.

Professor Shen’s work over the years is striking for its diversity. He made important contributions in transonic and hypersonic aerodynamics; aeroelasticity; finite-element methods for aerodynamics; hydrodynamic stability (including a notable review of the subject in the Princeton Series in High Speed Aerodynamics and Jet Propulsion); the kinetic theory of gases; non-Newtonian flows, including modeling of polymer flows with heat transfer; rarefied gas dynamics; and most recently, the theory and computation of boundary-layer separation, especially in unsteady flow over maneuvering bodies.

From 1974 to 1988, with Professor K.K. Wang (NAE, 1989), he was co-principal investigator of the Cornell Injection Molding Program (CIMP), a pioneering research project supported by the National Science Foundation. This program, conceived and led by Professor Wang, was established to help manufacturers solve problems related to the production of plastic parts. In 1979, an industrial consortium was established enabling more than 50 major corporations throughout the world to benefit from the results of CIMP.

The goal of CIMP was to establish a scientific basis for solving practical problems of injection molding, and Shan-Fu Shen contributed the theoretical understanding of relevant fluid mechanics and heat-transfer issues. His research with colleagues