Helen H. Shen, Professor, Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures, The University of Iowa, USA. She served as Academic Coordinator of the Chinese Program, Director of Graduate Studies for the Department; college board SAT Subjest Tests Committee in the U.S.; Roundtable Grant Committee of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations in the U.S., grant Evaluator for the International and Foreign Language Education grants of the US Department of Education, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. From 2012-18, she served on the Board of Directors for the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA. And served as President for the association in 2016. 

Professor Shen‘s major research areas are Chinese L2 literacy development and reading education. She has published dozens of journal articles and is the author of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language: Vocabulary Acquisition and Instruction (Second Edition), and lead author for the books of Introduction to Standard Chinese Pinyin System, Learning 100 Chinese Radicals, and Routledge Intermediate Chinese Reader. She is editor for the book, Teaching Chinese as a Second Language: Character and Word Teaching Methods and co-editor of the book, Research Among Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language. 

She is the recipient of an International Research grant from the US Department of Education (2005-08) to develop the comprehensive web-based project--The Chinese Reading World. She is the recipient of three summer STARTALK grants (2010, 2016, 2017) and one year-round STARTALK grants (2022) from the US Government. In 2015 she was invited by the Mandarin Institute--Loyola Marymount University STARTALK Infrastructure Program to direct the construction of the first online K–5 word frequency database for Chinese L2 learners. 

Professor Shen retired from the University of Iowa in 2023 and remains as Professor Emeritus. Currently she serves on the editorial board for the four academic journals and US government's Critical Language Grant evaluator, and Vice President for Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association-Eastern Iowa Chapter.