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Valerie Sheares Ashby is the current dean of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University. She was formerly the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During her tenure at UNC Chapel Hill, Ashby's research program focused on the synthesis and application of biomaterial polymers.

Education
Ashby grew up in Clayton, North Carolina and was first introduced to science through her father, a high school math and science teacher.

In 1988, Ashby graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a B.A. in chemistry. Ashby then completed her doctoral studies at Carolina in August 1994. , where she was a research assistant in the lab of Professor Joseph M. DeSimone and worked on the synthesis and characterization of polymeric thiophenes. During her time at UNC Chapel Hill, Ashby worked as a visiting scientist at IBM at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, from May 1992 to August 1992 and spent the summer of 1993 as a visiting scientist at Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tennessee.

After graduating from Carolina, she moved to Mainz, Germany, where she worked on the synthesis of ABC block copolymers as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz Institute for Organic Chemistry under the direction of Professor Reimund Stadler.

Career
Ashby began her academic career at Iowa State University as an assistant professor in January 1996. She was promoted to Associate Professor in August 2002. She spent August 2003 to June 2004 on sabbatical leave at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts under the direction of Professor Robert Langer. While at Iowa State she was a mentor for the Iowa State University Program for Women in Science & Engineering which was a summer research program for undergraduate and high school students.

In August 2003 she moved to UNC Chapel Hill and began her tenure as an Associate Professor. While an associate professor, Ashby was awarded an NSF grant that aimed to increase the number of underrepresented minorities receiving doctoral degrees in STEM fields. Her worked helped to increase the PhD completion rate for underrepresented minorities from about 60% to 85% at the university. She was appointed Vice Chair of Undergraduate Studies in August 2005. Ashby was granted the rank of full professor and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor of Chemistry in July 2007. In July 2012 she was named Chair of the Department of Chemistry at UNC and the faculty director of the UNC Chapel Hill Graduate School Initiative for Minority Excellence (IME) in July 2014.

Through her career, Ashby has accumulated numerous awards including the National Science Foundation Career Development Award, the DuPont Young Faculty Award, the 3M Young Faculty Award, the UNC Chapel Hill General Alumni Association Faculty Service Award, the J. Carlyle Sitterson Freshman Teaching Award, the UNC Student Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Johnston Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching.

Current position
On Thursday May 7, 2015 Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead and Provost Sally Kornbluth announced that Ashby would be the next dean of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University succeeding Laurie Patton, who became the new president of Middlebury. The search committee that nominated and unanimously supported Ashby consisted of faculty members, students, administrators and trustees.

List of patents

 * “Shape Memory Materials and Biomaterials with Fabrication of Nanoscopic and Microscopic Features”, Patent filed, 5/14.
 * “Iodinated Polymers for CT Contrast Agents”, Patent filed 8/14.
 * “Polyester Based Degradable Materials and Implantable Biomedical Articles Formed Therefrom”, issued 9/6/11, U.S. Patent No. 8,013,061
 * “pH-Sensitive Methacrylic Copolymers and the Production Thereof”, issued 1/07, U.S. Patent Number 7,160,971.
 * “Functionalized Diene Monomers and Polymers Containing Functionalized Dienes and Methods for Their Preparation”, Continuation issued 6/03, Patent No. 6,583,260
 * “Functionalized Diene Monomers and Polymers Containing Functionalized Dienes and Methods for Their Preparation”, Continuation Issued 2/02, Patent No. 6,344,538
 * “Functionalized Diene Monomers and Polymers Containing Functionalized Dienes and Methods for Their Preparation”, Issued 8/00, Patent No. 6,100,373
 * “High Performance Fluorinated Polymers and Methods”, Issued 2/03, Patent No. 6,515,101