Elke completed her Bachelor of Science degree (first class Honours) and PhD at James Cook University. She then accepted a post-doctoral position at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, USA) in the laboratories of Prof Claudia Robertson, a leading researcher in traumatic brain injury and Prof Robert Bryan, an expert in the cerebral circulation. She became a faculty member at Baylor in 2000. Her research has been funded by the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health. In 2010, Elke returned to Australia, accepting an academic appointment in the Department of Human Physiology at Flinders University. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms associated with endothelial dysfunction in the brain, aimed towards developing therapeutic strategies to improve cerebrovascular health.