After graduating from high school in 2010 Elena went to Preparatory school (a 2 year intensive preparation for competitive entrance examination to Engineering schools (Physics-Chemistry)). She was then accepted in 2012 at Institut d’Optique Graduate School (Optical Engineering School). At the same time she did a parallel of Fundamental Physics bachelor and master at University of Orsay. During this time she completed two internships: a 6 week internship (2013) at the Paris Observatory working on calibration of optical fibers for a telescope interferometer and a 4 month internship (2014) at the Space Telescope Science Institute working on analysis of Hubble Telescope Data to search for planets and dust disks.
In 2015 Elena pursued a Masters degree at Imperial College London in Biomedical Engineering, which included a 6 month research internship working on a nano scale analysis of functional morphology in 3D microscopy data sets of the eye.
Finally Elena started a doctorate in 2016 at Institut de la Vision in collaboration with the French Aerospace Lab in Paris focused on the high resolution imaging of the retina and obtained the PhD degree in January 2019. In January she began a postdoctorate at Quinze Vingt hospital working with Michel Paques and Kate Grieve on the high resolution imaging of the retina that ended in April before arriving to University of Pittsburgh. Her main focus with Dr Rossi's lab was establishing autofluorescence imaging on the AOSLO system.