Eli grew up in Maryland and spent his childhood on the waters of the Potomac river and Chesapeake bay. While attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, Eli's appreciation for the outdoors grew alongside his interest in earth and environmental sciences, which began in a Geomorphology class taken during his freshman year. Eli graduated in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Earth and Environmental Sciences with a minor in Computer Science. He graduated with honors after completing a senior thesis research project under the direction Dr. David Furbish, entitled "Hillslope Hydrology and Geomorphology: Chemical Erosion and Implications for Hillslope Evolution".

After graduating, Eli worked for 2 years as a software engineer at CIBO Technologies, using field data to improve corn and soy crop models and scaling model runs across the United States. Eli began as a graduate student at University of Washington in August of 2020 and defended his master's thesis in September 2022, entitled "Estimating sediment yields of glacierized basins on Mount Baker with Historical Structure from Motion, 1947-2015". Soon after, Eli's passion for geophysics, hydrology, and field work led him to join the Mountain Hydrology Research Group as a member of the Sublimation of Snow research team. If you can't find him in the "treehouse" of Wilcox Hall, you might find Eli car camping in the Cascades, skiing near Snoqualmie Pass, or in his kitchen cooking something that takes way too long.