Els is an interdisciplinary scientist who enjoys to collaborate with people from different fields to learn from each other and find overarching or ‘universal’ patterns. She has three main research interest: 1) Quantifying resilience in multivariate systems and then using the developed quantification tools on real world data from different fields (e.g. climate, ecology, physiology, economy), 2) Using both old-fashioned and modern data analysis techniques to extract relevant information from spatio-temporal datasets, and 3) Visualizing multivariate systems as networks and explore the questions that naturally emerge from such a visualization. Next to research, she enjoys teaching various courses such as ‘systems analysis’ and ‘global climate change’. Both in her research and in her teaching, she likes coming up with explanations and visualizations that help to build intuition for abstract concepts.