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Dawn Shaughnessy is an American radiochemist and principal investigator of the Heavy Element Group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She was involved in the discovery of six superheavy elements with atomic numbers 113 to 118.

Dawn Shaughnessy has a background in nuclear and radiochemistry and received a Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in the study of fission in the actinide elements. She completed a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where she performed research on the environmental behavior of plutonium.

In addition to her management responsibilities, Dawn is the Principle Investigator for Heavy Element research at Livermore and the Group Leader for Radiochemical diagnostics at the National Ignition Facility. Her current research interests include using  ICF  facilities for nuclear data measurements, fission properties, actinide chemistry, heavy element chemistry, and chemical automation.

Early life and Education
Shaughnessy wanted to be a doctor as a child but became interested in science during middle school. She studied at El Segundo High School. She earned her Bachelors in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. She joined Darleane C. Hoffman's group for her doctoral studies, and completed her PhD at the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry in 2000. Her thesis considered the delayed fission of einsteinium and the study of fission in the actinide elements. She completed a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where she studied the sorption of plutonium to manganese for environmental remediation studies.

Personal Life
Shaughnessy openly discusses the balance between work and family, and strives to be a role model for young female chemists to achieve this delicate balance.

We still need to work on the image of women in science and really promote the idea that a woman who studies one of the STEM disciplines is not like our typical view of scientists on TV. All too often, a young girl may find science really fascinating, but once she enters later grades in school, there is an image that she will have to give up other things in her life to pursue science. We need to somehow get the message out that science is not an all or nothing endeavor. Most women scientists have families, hobbies, and rich lives outside of the laboratory. We also need to promote STEM to the parents of these children. Without even realizing it, parents often dissuade their young girls from pursuing their interests in STEM because of their own preconceived notions of how a female scientist should look or act. Or they may even think their young girls cannot succeed because we still don’t associate women with the sciences, and they may encourage them to pursue a more traditional career path. It may take a long time, but if we start showcasing women scientists as role models who do not look like the stereotypes shown on TV, the message will eventually come across

Career and Research
In 2002 she went to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a staff chemist in the Stockpile Radiochemistry Group. In 2008 she was named the Deputy Program Element Leader for the Stockpile Radiochemistry Group, and was then named Group Leader of the Experimental Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group in 2010.

Shaughnessy joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2000, working under Heino Nitsche. As part of a United States Department of Energy effort to clear the environment of hazardous materials, Shaughnessy studied the effect of plutonium on manganese-bearing minerals. She joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2002 as a staff chemist in the Stockpile Radiochemistry Group. In 2008 she was named Deputy Program Element Leader and became Group Leader of the Experimental Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group in 2010.

In 2012 her research group received a $5,000 grant which they donated to the Livermore High School department of chemistry. She was appointed Group Leader for the Experimental Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group in 2013. She has been involved in campaigns to celebrate Women's History Month. In 2014 she was the editor of the book The Chemistry of Superheavy Elements.

Element 116, Livermorium, is created by fusing calcium isotopes with curium (20 protons + 96 protons = 116 protons). This element almost instantaneously decays in Flerovium, element 114 through the release of 2 protons.

For example, the creation of elements 116 and 114 involved smashing calcium isotopes (with 20 protons each) into a curium target (96 protons) to create element 116 (20 protons of calcium plus 96 protons of curium equals 116). Element 116 decayed almost immediately into element 114.

Whilst leading the Heavy Element group, Shaughnessy partnered with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research; the team managed to identify five new superheavy elements. The elements were confirmed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in January 2016. As they were discovered at the Livermore lab, she named element 116 Livermorium. Her recent work has included nuclear forensics - being able to identify the traces of fissile material, products and activation products after an explosion. Her team is trying to automate sample preparation and detection, allowing them to speed up isotope analysis. so that chemistry measurements will take a minute as opposed to up to five minutes if done by hand.

Though others are already looking to push to create elements 119 and 120, her main focus for now is actually trying to create the tools so they can study the chemical properties of some of the lighter “superheavy” elements that have been created. The problem is that there are no instruments in existence that can operate as quickly as one-second time scales needed to measure the new elements.

Dawn’s general research interests include actinide and heavy element chemistry, chemical automation, nuclear forensics methods and radiochemical diagnostics.

"I've always thought chemistry is the most fascinating science. It's how the universe works stuff. How matter reacts with other matter. How one molecule behaves with another molecule and makes something totally new."

“I think that too few are getting the opportunity to learn about the world around them.”

“The interest in discovering new elements is to refine our theories about the existence of matter and how the nucleus is formed,” she writes. “Every time we push the boundary of finding a new element, it helps to refine these models and our basic understanding of the extreme limits of matter.”

Publications
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2106048782_Dawn_Shaughnessy

Awards and Recognition
2010 - Department of Energy Office of Science Outstanding Mentor Award

2010 - Gordon Battelle Prize for Scientific Discovery

2012 - Inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame

2016 - Fast Company Most Creative

2018 - Elected as American Chemical Society Fellow.