Valerie S Ashby, Dean of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Please note: Valerie has left the "Office of the Dean" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

Valerie Sheares Ashby is the Dean of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University. She received her B.A. and her Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill and completed her postdoctoral research at the Universitat Mainz, Germany in 1994 as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and NATO Postdoctoral Fellow.

Ashby came to Duke from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where she chaired the Department of Chemistry from 2012-2015. As a faculty member at UNC since 2003, she has held numerous leadership positions and has experience at all levels of academic administration. She served on the UNC Arts & Sciences Foundation Board of Directors, and on the UNC Research Advisory Council tasked with strategic planning on interdisciplinary research development. She chaired the university’s Institutional Conflict of Interest Committee as well as the UNC College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Diversity Task Force. She served on the UNC Faculty Executive Committee and advised administration on aligning university priorities with the university mission. She engaged in all aspects of the undergraduate educational experience, including curriculum and advising, in her role as the Chemistry Department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies. And, she directed the UNC National Science Foundation Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, aimed at increasing the number of underrepresented students completing doctoral degrees and continuing into the professoriate in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and social, behavioral and economics (SBE) fields.

As a researcher, Ashby’s work focused on synthetic polymer chemistry with a present focus on designing and synthesizing materials for biomedical applications such as X-ray contrast agents and drug delivery materials. She is the recipient of the National Science Foundation Career Development Award, the DuPont Young Faculty and 3M Young Faculty Awards.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	421 Chapel Drive - 104 Allen, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address:

Education:

Ph.D.	University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill	1994
B.A.	University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill	1988

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Houston, KR; Jackson, AMS; Yost, RW; Carman, HS; Sheares Ashby, V, Supramolecular engineering polyesters: Endgroup functionalization of glycol modified PET with ureidopyrimidinone, Polymer Chemistry, vol. 7 no. 44 (November, 2016), pp. 6744-6751, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) [doi]  [abs]
2. Rochette, JM; Ashby, VS, Photoresponsive polyesters for tailorable shape memory biomaterials, Macromolecules, vol. 46 no. 6 (March, 2013), pp. 2134-2140, American Chemical Society (ACS) [doi]  [abs]
3. Le, DM; Kulangara, K; Adler, AF; Leong, KW; Ashby, VS, Dynamic topographical control of mesenchymal stem cells by culture on responsive poly(ε-caprolactone) surfaces., Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.), vol. 23 no. 29 (August, 2011), pp. 3278-3283 [doi]
4. Andjelkovic, DD; Sheares, VV, Isomeric hexafluoroisopropylidene-linked benzophenone polymers via nickel catalysis, Macromolecules, vol. 40 no. 20 (October, 2007), pp. 7148-7156, American Chemical Society (ACS) [doi]  [abs]
5. Jones, CA; Andjelkovic, DD; Sheares, VV, Synthesis and characterization of new hexafluoroisopropylidene-linked benzophenone polymers., Abstracts of Papers of the American Chemical Society, vol. 229 (March, Preprint, 2005), pp. U979-U979, AMER CHEMICAL SOC