First person – Valentina Laverde

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Valentina Laverde is first author on ‘ The zebrafish ETS transcription factor Fli1b functions upstream of Scl/Tal1 during embryonic hematopoiesis’, published in BiO. Valentina conducted the research described in this article while a research scientist in Dr Saulius Sumanas's lab at USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA. She is now a PhD student at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA, and is interested in cancer immunology research and how to better target the tumor microenvironment to improve anti-tumor immunity.