Jillian Lee Dempsey is an American inorganic chemist and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

[7] Dempsey then travelled to the California Institute of Technology for graduate studies, where she worked in the laboratory of Prof. Harry B.

[8][9] Dempsey's research at Caltech focused on elucidating the mechanism of hydrogen evolution for cobaloxime catalysts,[10][11] as well as the reactivity of photogenerated osmium(II) complexes.

From 2011 to 2012, Dempsey then conducted postdoctoral research as an NSF American Competitiveness in Chemistry Fellow in the laboratory of Daniel R. Gamelin at the University of Washington.

[15] Dempsey began her independent career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012 as an assistant professor.