Elya Zazovskaya, Ph.D., joined CAIS in 2022 and has more than 20 years of experience in radiocarbon dating, stable isotope ratio analysis, and soil organic carbon study for archaeological, geological, soil sciences and paleogeographic. Her previous career was related to the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IGAN, Moscow), where for many years, she headed the laboratory of radiocarbon dating. Her research interests include methodical and methodological aspects of radiocarbon dating and its application for studies of soil organic matter, sediments of extreme habitat conditions, geoarchaeology, and anthropology.

She had a fellow an Interregional training course on the use of fallout radionuclides and compound-specific stable isotope techniques for precision soil conservation in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). She completed the training course in the Ionplus (Switzerland) AGE graphitization systems for AMS radiocarbon dating.

She has experience in field research in high latitudes – Arctic, Antarctic, high altitude areas of Altay and Caucasus, and Holocene and late Pleistocene archaeological sites. Elya has over a hundred publications in journals such as Radiocarbon, Scientific reports, Quaternary Science Reviews, Quaternary Geochronology, Archaeological & Anthropological sciences, Catena, etc. She enjoys working with samples in the lab and passing on her expertise to students and other staff members.

Away from the office, Elya loves cooking for her friends, traveling, and dancing tango