Elena Ivanova

Elena P. Ivanova is a nanobiotechnologist/biophysicist, academic, and author. She is a Distinguished Professor at RMIT University. She has conducted research on biomaterials and bioengineering.

Ivanova has authored/co-authored books, including New Functional Biomaterials for Medicine and Healthcare, Antibacterial Surfaces, and Superhydrophobic Surfaces.

Career Between 1998 and 2001, Ivanova was a senior scientist at Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry. In 2001, she joined Swinburne University of Technology as a senior lecturer, becoming associate professor and professor later. She left Swinburne to joined RMIT in 2019 as distinguished professor.

Research Ivanova works in the fields of nanobiotechnology, material science, and microbiology. As of 2025, her work has been cited 19,000 times.

She led a research project on biomimetic mechano-bactericidal nanostructured surfaces. In her studies focused on mechanical rupture of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterial cells by cicada Psaltoda claripennis wings, she demonstrated that upon being incubated on cicada wings, Pseudomonas aeruginosa cells are stretched and ruptured by the nanopillar arrays present on the wing surface, resulting in bacterial cell death. Her studies further showed that cicada wings are highly effective antibacterial.

Awards and honors 2016 - Women of Swinburne, Swinburne University of Technology 2017 - Australian Museum Eureka for Scientific Research 2019 - Distinguished Professor, RMIT University