Much of Sheffield's work examines conformal invariant objects which arise in the study of two-dimensional statistical physics models.

[2] In joint work with Oded Schramm, he showed that contour lines of the Gaussian free field are related to SLE(4).

[5] Sheffield and Bertrand Duplantier proved the Knizhnik–Polyakov–Zamolodchikov (KPZ) relation for fractal scaling dimensions in Liouville quantum gravity.

[6] Sheffield also defined the conformal loop ensembles, which serve as scaling limits of the collection of all interfaces in various statistical physics models.

Before becoming a professor at MIT, Sheffield held postdoctoral positions at Microsoft Research, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Institute for Advanced Study.