She received her BS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado in 2000 and her PhD in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University in 2005. Her thesis work focused on studying rare events in nonlinear lightwave systems. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) from 2006-2008. At that point her interest in rare events transitioned to geophysical hazards applications. Elaine and colleagues have pioneered a strategy to make fully probabilistic geophysical hazard maps.