Shams joined the group as a postdoctoral associate in September 2026. He received his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park, working with Prof. Pratyush Tiwary. In his PhD work, he developed AI-augmented enhanced sampling techniques for RNA therapeutics and to understand protein conformational change. Afterwards, he worked with Prof. Olexandr Isayev at Carnegie Mellon University to develop foundation-scale machine-learned interatomic potentials. In the Kulik group, he is developing a framework for understanding lipid nanoparticle-formulated mRNA delivery systems.