Valentina is originally from Chile where she got her BA in journalism. After moving to San Francisco, she realized that she wanted to pursue a career in science so she started taking different STEM classes. She arrived at the Ott lab as a student intern while completing her AS in Biotechnology from CCSF and stayed as an RA. Outside of the lab, she enjoys hiking, taking care of her houseplants, watching anime, and listening to music.
Research Area: Influenza
Ott
Institute of Virology
Senior Vice President, Gladstone Institutes
Professor of Medicine, UCSF
Melanie Ott earned her MD degree from University of Frankfurt in Germany and a PhD from the Picower Graduate School of Molecular Medicine in New York. In 1998, she started her own research group at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany, in the department headed by tumor virologist and Nobel laureate Harald zur Hausen, studying HIV pathogenesis and a new emerging pathogen at the time, hepatitis C virus (HCV).
In 2002, she moved her lab to the Gladstone Institutes, where she continued her work on HIV and HCV, and expanded her research into the host-virus interface in diseases such as Zika, influenza and SARS-CoV-2. She has focused much of her work on the role of reversible protein acetylation in HIV transcription (especially the viral Tat protein), and identifying new molecular targets for treatments and cure, new diagnostics and the potential for pan-viral therapeutics.
Melanie is the Director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology Institute and Senior Vice President of the Gladstone Institutes, and a professor of medicine at University of California – San Francisco. She is a recipient of NIH MERIT and DP1 Avantgarde Awards, an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.