Dr. Michael Shuster is a partner in the Intellectual Property Group of Fenwick & West LLP, a law firm specializing in high technology matters. Shuster is resident in the firm's San Francisco office. Shuster's practice focuses on patent prosecution for biotechnology companies. His clients include startups and established bioscience corporations and research universities and hospitals. Before becoming a lawyer, his earlier career experience included research in the laboratory of Professor Eric Kandel at Columbia University as part of a team focused on discovery of mechanisms by which short-term memories are stored, research for which Professor Kandel was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Shuster then moved to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, where he pursued his interests in ion channel biophysics and protein structure, first as a Markey post-doctoral fellow, and later as a research biochemist in the Department of Medicine.