Elena graduated in Biomedical Science BSc at Queen Mary University of London in 2013, and completed a MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at Sussex University in 2014. Her BSc and MSc theses investigated temporal order judgment advantages in expert musicians, and the effects of synaesthesia training on early visual processing using EEG.

After graduating she worked in Australia for a year as a research intern, first at the University of Queensland, and then at Swinburne University of Technology, where she gained experience in fMRI and MEG analysis.

After a 6 months period where she worked on two lab rotations in the areas of Brain-Computer-Interface and Biological Movement in Autism, she is now a PhD student at the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology under the supervision of Prof. Lawrence Barsalou. Her project investigates the neural mechanisms underlying food cue processing using fMRI and MEG techniques, and how these mechanisms are influenced by factors such as Body Mass Index, dieting, and food palatability