He studied electrical engineering at MIT, where he wrote a PhD thesis on "velocity overshoot in deeply scaled MOSFETs" (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors), under supervision of Professor Dimitri A. Antoniadis.
A 60 nanometer silicon MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) was fabricated by Shahidi with Antoniadis and Henry I. Smith at MIT in 1986.
[5] He was a key figure in making SOI CMOS technology a manufacturable reality and enabling the continued miniaturization of microelectronics.
Later that year, IBM was set to introduce 130 nanometer CMOS SOI devices with copper and low-κ dielectric for the back end, based on Shahidi's work.
[7] Shahidi received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' J J Ebers Award in 2006, for his "contributions and leadership in the development of Silicon-On-Insulator CMOS technology".