Iart Luca Shytaj (born 3 February 1986) is an Albanian-Italian chess grandmaster and virologist.

Born on 3 February 1986, Shytaj won the Albanian Chess Championship in 2003.

He earned his international master (IM) title in 2006, and won the Italian Rapid Chess Championship in 2009.

[5] Shytaj received a bachelor's degree in biology from the Sapienza University of Rome, and a master's degree in genetics and molecular biology from the same university.

[1] His Ph.D. thesis, which resulted in a functional cure of AIDS in macaques,[6] was named as one of the three best presentations at HIV Dart 2012, an international conference on drug development processes in antiretroviral research.