Ella works with Adele and Tom Griffiths. She employs empirical and computational methods to study creativity in human and artificial minds —specifically how people and large language models connect seemingly unrelated domains, such as in metaphor, analogy, and synesthesia. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and an M.S. in Statistics from UW–Madison, an M.S. in Educational Psychology from UIUC, and a B.A. in English from the University of International Business and Economics in China.