Jagdeep Shah received his BSc from the University of Bombay in 1962 and PhD from MIT in 1967.

Shah was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey for much of his career. In this position, he made several seminal contributions to optical and electrical properties of semiconductors, ultrafast coherent and incoherent dynamics in semiconductors and their nanostructures, and to the understanding of ultrafast dynamics of electronic, optoelectronics, and photonic devices.

He has more than 300 technical publications, including an authored book and an edited book.

He has been awarded the Distinguished Traveling Lecturer Award from the American Physical Society, the Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award, and the Bell Labs Distinguished Member of Technical Staff Award and the Max Born Award. He is a Fellow of the Society and the American Physical Society.