She got her PhD degree in Mathematics from Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia. She held visiting positions at the University of Washington, George Washington University and University of California, Berkeley, USA. Her main research interests concern time series analysis and spatio-temporal modeling, with applications ranging from weather and climate forecasting to legal statistics. Professor Gel is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and Vice-President Membership and Outreach of the International Society on Business and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS).