Elena studied Physics at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain, from 2000 to 2005. For her PhD she stayed at the same university with a national FPU fellowship and worked in the Quantum Nanosystems Group of Prof. Francisco Domínguez-Adame. There, she primarily worked on optical and transport properties of disordered molecular systems such as DNA molecules. During her PhD she spent short-term research periods at different institutes like the University of Bayreuth, Germany, the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, The Netherlands, and Duke University, USA. Later on, she acquired some basic experience in biochemical experimental techniques at the NanoTech Laboratory of Prof. La Bean, Duke University.
In March 2010, after defending her PhD thesis, she joined the group of Prof. Gianaurelio Cuniberti as a postdoc. In Dresden, Elena plans to work on energy flow on single organic molecules and biomolecular systems.