Valentina was born in the beautiful city of Milan in 1988. In 2012 she obtained her Master's Degree in Chemistry with full marks cum laude from the University of Pavia and the habilitation to practice as Chemist. In 2012 she enrolled in the Ph.D. course in Chemical Sciences at the University of Pavia with Prof. Dr. L. Casella, and she defended her thesis entitled “Model systems for oxidative processes” in January 2016 with an excellent evaluation. After her doctoral studies, she became a Postdoctoral Researcher under the supervision of Prof. M. Freccero, working on photoactive and selective ligands for telomeric G4 as anticancer agents, reactive and selective ligands for quadruplex helical nucleic acids and the synthesis and characterization of antibiotics binding nucleic acids. Having deepened her vast knowledge of the topic, she became first a senior Postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Dr. Filippo Doria, and then a research fellow working on the synthesis and characterization of selective ligands for secondary structures of nucleic acids. 

From June 2023 she is an Assistant Professor (RTDA) in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pavia, and obrtained the national scientific qualification as Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry (03/C1).

in Novwmber 2020, she founded the G4-INTERACT (G-quadruplexes As INnovative ThERApeutiC Targets), an international group of young researchers recognized by the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network” (USERN) Community, with whome she has been organizing the INTERACTION WINS doctoral school yearly since November 2021. Since December 2024 she is Associate Editor of International Journal of Biological Macromolecules (I.F. 2023 7.7), Elsevier, for the Section "Proteins and Nucleic Acids".

Valentina’s research interests are innovative gene therapies based on the selective targeting of nucleic acid’s secondary structures to identify novel, safe, and effective approaches for the treatment of different pathologies. Her main efforts are aimed at identifying secondary nucleic acid structures (i.e. G4s), located in regulatory regions of genes, providing their implication in different pathways involved in the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. The most significant works in this context are (i) design and synthesis of highly selective G4-ligands; (ii) specific cleavage of DNA/RNA-G4s through metal-catalyzed redox processes; (iii) conjugation of G4-ligands with peptide nucleic acids to boost selectivity between different G4s by a combination of G4-structural interaction and PNA/nucleic acids sequence-specific hybridization; (iv) bioinformatics and biophysical studies for the analysis of the interaction between G4s and ligands.