Dr. Obradovic received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology in 2007 from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, under the supervision of Dr. Ann Masten. From 2007 to 2009, she was a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia, working with Dr. Tom Boyce at the Human Early Learning Partnership. In her first two years at Stanford, from 2009 to 2011, she was a junior fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s Experience-based Brain and Biological Development Program. She is currently a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar and is a recipient of the Society for Research in Child Development Early Career Research Contribution Award. Together with her collaborators, Jelena studies processes that contribute to resilience in diverse groups of children, including immigrant youth, inner-city children from high-risk, low-income backgrounds, and children living in rural Pakistan.

Dr. Obradovic's laboratory studies how the interplay between children's biological sensitivity and the quality of the environments in which they grow and learn shapes children's health and well-being. In addition, they study how self-regulatory skills help children cope with daily challenges by enabling them to control their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Their work aims to identify how families and teachers can help children with differing biological reactivity profiles and self-regulatory capacities succeed over time. Their research has important implications for children who come from diverse family, socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. They hope to apply our research findings to the design and implementation of prevention and intervention programs aimed at improving children's lives.