Dawn Angela Shaughnessy is an American radiochemist and principal investigator of the heavy element group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

[6] She joined Darleane C. Hoffman's group for her doctoral studies, and completed her PhD[1] at the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry in 2000.

[6] Shaughnessy joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2000, working under Heino Nitsche.

[6] As part of a United States Department of Energy effort to clean up nuclear materials in the environment, Shaughnessy studied how plutonium interacts with manganese-bearing minerals.

[17][18] Her team are trying to automate sample preparation and detection, allowing them to speed up their isotope analysis.