Brenda Schulman is broadly interested in regulation by the ubiquitin system. Her lab defines ubiquitylation pathways and mechanisms.  Structures from the Schulman lab have defined the fundamental enzymology of the major classes of ubiquitylating enzymes, and their regulation from assembly, to activation, and ultimate decommissioning. A current focus is using the lab's in-depth structural knowledge to develop new tools to probe cellular signaling through the ubiquitin system.

Schulman began her faculty appointment at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 2001, where she retains an adjunct faculty position. She was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Joseph Simone Chair in Basic Research at St. Jude until 2017, when she became a full-time Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. Schulman received a number of early career awards, and more recently has been recognized by ERC Advanced Grants, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, an Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine, and a Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. Schulman was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012, the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 (USA), EMBO in 2018, and the German National Academy of Sciences in 2019.

Schulman Lab