Chuck Arrington
Coordinator of the Organic Chemistry Laboratories
Earl Ashcraft, Ph.D.
Instructional & Research Chemical Instrument TechnicianJan Dean-Clemmer
Coordinator of General Chemistry Laboratories
Diane Dickie, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist and X-Ray CrystallographerDr. Diane Dickie joined the Chemistry Department in January 2018 as a Senior Scientist and X-Ray Crystallographer. Diane will also be working with the Materials Science Department. Her office is Room 103 in the Material Science Building. Diane received an honors B.Sc. from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where she worked on the hydroboration of novel ketoenamines under the supervision of Prof. Stephen Westcott.
She earned her Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia in Prof. Jason Clyburne’s lab, studying substituted m-terphenyl ligands in main group and transition metal chemistry. Her postdoctoral research on the activation of carbon dioxide with main group metal amides was conducted with Prof. Richard Kemp at the University of New Mexico and the Advanced Materials Laboratory of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
While in New Mexico, Diane was heavily involved in Sandia’s award-winning elementary school science-outreach program “CSI: Dognapping”, and she was promoted to the position of Research Assistant Professor in UNM’s Chemistry department. Diane’s most recent position, before arriving at the University of Virginia, was as X-ray Diffraction Facility Director at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Dana DiScenza, Ph.D.
Laboratory Manager, Venton LaboratoryDana DiScenza joined the Department of Chemistry in September 2019 as a Laboratory Manager in the Venton Lab. Dana obtained her B.S. in Chemistry at Marist College, then went on to earn her Master’s in Business Administration and Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Rhode Island. Her graduate work was focused on the study of noncovalent intermolecular interactions and the development of sensors for carcinogens in environmental samples, food samples, and biological fluids. Upon finishing her doctoral degree, Dana worked in science marketing for the Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) BrandLab at the American Chemical Society headquarters in Washington, DC. After a year at C&EN, Dana and her husband Scott moved to Charlottesville so he could pursue his Ph.D. in Chemistry in the Landers Lab at UVA. In the Venton Lab, Dana has been helping Professor Venton in the day-to-day tasks of running her research laboratory while she is Chair of the Department.
Jeff Ellena, Ph.D.
Biomolecular magnetic resonance facilities managerCarol Price, Ph.D.
Coordinator of the Biochemistry Laboratories
Jeffrey Shabanowitz, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist, Hunt LaboratoryI work with Professor Hunt’s group to develop new methods and instrumentation in mass spectrometry to determine the primary structure of proteins and peptides and apply these methods to the structural characterization of proteins in complex mixtures and to peptides presented to the immune system in association with class I or class II molecules of the major histocompatibility complex.