Elvan earned her PhD at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute (2008–2012), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Boston (2013–2016). In 2017, she established her laboratory at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona and became an ICREA Research Professor in 2025.
Her research explores the strategies and mechanisms that enable oocytes to resist ageing for decades—and why these defenses eventually fail with advanced maternal age.
Elvan has received numerous honours, including two consecutive European Research Council grants (a Starting Grant in 2017 and a Consolidator Grant in 2022), the EMBO Young Investigator Award in 2021, and the EMBO Gold Medal in 2024.


