Dr. Elser is an Assistant Professor of Neurology in the Division of Cognitive Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Elser earned her PhD in epidemiology from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 2019 and completed her MD at the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2021. She completed Neurology Residency and Fellowship in Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Elser’s research leverages existing administrative data sources – including electronic health records and claims data – and aims to identify upstream determinants of neurological and psychiatric diseases, with an emphasis on neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease. Her current research encompasses two broad areas of inquiry: First, her research aims to characterize the relationship between neurological diseases and psychiatric symptoms - including depression, anxiety, psychosis and suicidality - over the lifecourse. Second, her research examines the implications of environmental risk factors for the onset and worsening of neurological diseases. She is particularly interested in understanding the unique health effects of wildfire smoke exposure, and her current research aims to integrate emerging biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases to characterize the biological basis of the association between long-term air pollution and dementia.
Her clinical practice, which is focused on the diagnosis and management of neurodegenerative dementias, is based out of the Philadelphia VA and the Penn Memory Center.
