Valérie Gabelica obtained her B.Sc. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Science in 2002 from the University of Liège in Belgium. After a postdoc in Frankfurt as a Von Humboldt Foundation fellow, she returned to Belgium to rejoin the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory in Liège, where she obtained a permanent position as a FNRS Research Associate in 2005. In 2013, she moved from Belgium to France to join the European Institute of Chemistry and Biology (IECB, Bordeaux) and became Inserm Research Director in December 2013 (promoted first class in 2023). She served as the director of the IECB from 2021 to 2023. In January 2024, she moved to the University of Geneva as a Full Professor.

Her main research interests are fundamental aspects of mass spectrometry and its application to non-covalent complexes, and nucleic acid complexes in particular, with research themes spanning from physical chemistry to biophysics and structural chemistry and biology. Valérie Gabelica was awarded an ERC Consolidator fellowship in 2014, received the Dr. and Mrs. Henri Labbé Prize (Academy of Sciences) in 2018, the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences in 2021, the Heinrich Emanuel Merck Prize for Analytical Sciences and the Inserm Research Prize in 2022. She is an associate editor for the journal Analytical Chemistry since 2021.