Valentin is a quantitative social ethologist, with an interdisciplinary expertise on collective behaviours in animal societies. He is particularly interested in spatial patterns and movements involved in collective behaviours, in fish and social insects. He did his PhD at the University of Toulouse, France and the University of Groningen, Netherlands, under the supervision of Guy Theraulaz and Charlotte Hemelrijk, investigating the social interactions involved in the coordination of collective motion and propagation of information in fish schools. After a brief visit to the group of Christos Ioannou at the University of Bristol, UK, he held two postdoctoral positions in Yorkshire, first investigating the emergence of polydomous networks in red wood ants with Elva Robinson at the University of York, UK and studying normative models with rational agents at the University of Leeds, UK, with Richard Mann. At SCIoI, Valentin joined the group of Pawel Romanczuk, and is involved in developing new modelling approaches with reinforced learning algorithms for Project 52.