CV Science

Valérie Gabelica PhD in Chemistry

Course and current status

Valérie Gabelica studied Chemistry and obtained her PhD in Sciences in 2002 at the University of Liège. After a postdoc in Frankfurt as Humboldt fellow, she rejoined the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory in Liège where she obtained an FNRS research associate position in October 2005. She joined the IECB in 2013 with the support of an Atip-Avenir grant, and became an Inserm research director (DR2) in December 2013. She obtained an ERC Consolidator grant in 2014. Her main research interests are fundamental aspects of mass spectrometry and its application to non-covalent complexes in general and nucleic acid complexes in particular, with research themes spanning from physical chemistry to biophysics and structural chemistry and biology.

Scientific summary

Our aim is to decipher the relationship between structures and energetics—Angstroms and Calories—in non-covalent complexes. Non-covalent interactions govern the structure and function of myriads of systems, from supramolecular assemblies to biological complexes. High-resolution structural methods help to understand what interactions are at stake in specific states of well-defined assemblies. Yet function is linked to energetics: How prevalent is a structural form? How does it switch to other states? How fast? To bridge the gap between structure and energetics, our team develops new mass spectrometry approaches to separate, quantify, and structurally characterize the different ensembles of structures (the different states) simultaneously present in solution.