He studied at Uppsala University, where he obtained an MSc in Engineering in 2000 and a PhD in Biotechnology in 2004 on stochasticity in intracellular processes.

In 2005 he moved to Harvard University where he developed single molecule methods to study transcription factor kinetics in living cells under the supervision of Prof. Xiaoliang Sunney Xie.

His main contributions are in algorithms for spatially-dependent stochastic simulations,[2] single molecule methods for studying molecular search kinetics in living cells,[3][4][5] optical pooled screening [6][7] and antibiotic susceptibility testing.

The company develops rapid antibiotic susceptibility tests based on the academic work[8] from the Elf lab.

In 2022 Elf co-founded Bifrost Biosystems (Boston, MA) with Johan Paulsson, Paul Blainey and George Church.