Dr. Shi is the Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Group leader for Emerging Virus Team.

She focuses her research on pathogen investigation of unknown viruses in wild animals and interspecies infection mechanism of zoonotic viruses.

She is in charge for the viral surveillance screening among bat samples leading to the discovery and new recognition of a wide-array of SARS-like coronaviruses, adenoviruses and adeno-associated viruses in mainland China.

 Her long experience on bat coronavirus led to the rapid identification of the pathogen of COVID-19 and its probable bat origin. Shi won the second prize of Natural Science Award of China in 2018 and was elected as fellowship of American Academy of Microbiology in 2019. She has provided editorial service to Virology, Virol J and has served since 2017 as Editor-in-Chief for Virologica Sinica.