Originally from Spain, Elvia has a background in environmental economics and her research work focuses on environmental socio-economic and monetary analysis, based on ecosystem services provision. She obtained her bachelor's degree in Economics at the University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain) and participated in the Erasmus+ programme at the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam (Netherlands). Through this international experience, she developed a profound interest in economic analysis aimed at informing decision-makers.

Given the critical importance of evaluating costs and benefits of natural capital, she carried out a MSc programme in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). She has been involved in several environmental economic valuation research projects, using spatial analysis tools and econometric-based software methods. Her master's thesis investigated the socio-economic values deriving from natural capital based on its ecosystem services provision in Denmark. Recently, she contributed to the work of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), expanding her knowledge on the existing methods to evaluate natural capital and ecosystem services from a socio-economic viewpoint.

As of November 2020, Elvia is employed as ESR14 under the PRORISK project in the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (Netherlands). Her research focuses on evaluating the socio-economic impacts of chemical substances on ecosystem services provision and natural capital. Her study aims to further develop socio-economic evaluation methods, quantifying the economic damages of chemicals to different stakeholders across time and space.