Jie Shan received her diploma in Mathematics and Physics from Moscow State University, Russia, in 1996 and her Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia University in 2001. From 2002 to 2014, she was an Assistant and Associate Professor in Physics at Case Western Reserve University and, from 2014 to 2017, an Associate and Full Professor at the Pennsylvania State University. She joined the Cornell University School of Applied and Engineering Physics as a Full Professor in 2018. She has been director at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg since mid-2024.

In 2013, Shan was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She also received a Marie Tharp Fellowship from the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. In Germany, she was honored with a Max Planck Sabbatical Award and the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize in 2021.