As a senior scientist, Elena’s work focusses on forage and dietary approaches to enhancing farm productivity and sustainability, including methane mitigation and climate adaptation.

Elena’s enjoys understanding what produces effective on-farm solutions and is passionate about working with farmers to ensure research outputs will meet their needs.

From a varied farming background, Elena’s grandparents were dairy farmers, and her parents were involved in goat and beef farming. She is motivated to use science to both address immediate needs, and on long term challenges.

Following ten years in a technical role on one of the DairyNZ research farm, Elena completed a Masters degree at the University of Waikato evaluating the productivity of new Tall fescue cultivars. She then gained a PhD comparing the efficiency of nitrogen utilisation between forages by dairy cows through Lincoln University in 2018.

Elena currently serves as an Associate Editor for the New Zealand Agriculture Research Journal (NZJR) and is an academic supervisor, for the next generation of researchers. Her career highlights include her participation in the He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) Innovation Group and Biological emissions reduction science accelerator (BERSA) Working Group, which focused on assessing methane solutions and refining research investment strategies.

Additionally, her postdoctoral research in the award-winning Forages for Reduced Nitrate Leaching program investigated the impact of plantain in diets on reducing urinary nitrogen excretion, contributing to farm application recommendations.