Valerie Bentivegna received her PhD in Life Sciences from the University of Dundee where she worked in Inke Näthke’s lab to study the mechanical properties of cells and tissues in two and three dimensions. She is interested in multidisciplinary approaches to biological questions by combining tissue culture, tissue engineering, fluorescence microscopy, and computational modeling to uncover complex questions. Aside from doing science, Valerie enjoys finding creative ways to communicate science including informal education, tinkering workshops, and comedy. Valerie joined the MatsuLab in October 2022 and is particularly interested in how endocytosis and membrane trafficking contributes to cellular self-organization into tissue structures called lumenoids. This process, lumenogenesis, is an important step embryonic development.