Valerie studies the role of emerging technologies in armed conflicts and their contribution to the prevention and resolution of such conflicts. Her goal is to enhance our understanding of why leaders decide to engage in wars, the ways these decisions lead to violent conflict, and the strategies conflict parties and third-party actors might use to settle these conflicts. 

She also co-leads an interdisciplinary research project aimed at developing a tool to detect armed conflict events by combining open-access satellite imagery with deep learning techniques. Additionally, she collaborates in a research endeavor that seeks to identify humanitarian crises by analyzing nighttime light data.