Shen Dingli, a physicist by training, is a professor of international relations at Fudan University. He is the Deputy Dean of Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies. He is also the founder and director of China's first non-government-based Program on Arms Control and Regional Security at Fudan University.

Dr Shen teaches at Fudan University graduate courses 'Nonproliferation and International Security', 'Science/Technology and National Security', as well as doctoral courses 'International Security: Theory and Practice', and 'Regional Security'.  He co-teaches undergraduate courses, 'China and the World', and 'Contemporary America', at Fudan.  He has taught China’s foreign policies at Colorado College since 2002.

His research areas cover China-US security relationship, nuclear arms control and disarmament, nuclear weapons policy of the United States and China, regional nonproliferation issues concerning South Asia, Northeast Asia and Middle East, test ban, missile defense, export control, as well as China’s foreign and defense policies.  He has co-edited 'China’s Development Report', 'China and South Asian Relations in the 1990s', 'Conservatism and American Foreign Policy', 'Realism and US Foreign Policy' and published over 500 articles and papers, half of which abroad in a dozen foreign languages. In addition, he has published over 20 papers in physics in China and abroad.

As a key independent academic voice in China in arms control and nonproliferation, Dr Shen has been invited to numerous conferences at home and abroad.  Also, among three dozen iinternational conferences he has organized, The Shanghai Dialogue (or Shanghai Initiative), a high level track-II series of meetings since 1994 involving China, India, Pakistan and the United States, is viewed as one of the most important multilateral unofficial talks on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation involving these countries.

Dr Shen is also a member of IISS and a number of other international organisations.