Elbakyan was born in Kazakhstan in 1988. She says she has "Armenian, Slavic and Asian roots".[6] Elbakyan undertook university studies in Astana, where she developed skills in computer hacking. A year working in computer security in Moscow gave her the money to proceed to Freiburg in 2010 to work on a brain-computer interface project, and she developed an interest in transhumanism, which led her to a summer internship at Georgia Institute of Technology in the USA. She began Sci-Hub on her return to Kazakhstan in 2011, characterised by Science as 'an awe-inspiring act of altruism or a massive criminal enterprise, depending on whom you ask'.[1] Following a lawsuit brought in the USA by the publisher Elsevier, Elbakyan is presently in hiding due to the risk of extradition.[7] According to a 2016 interview, her neuroscience research is on hold, but she has enrolled in a history of science master’s program at a “small private university” in an undisclosed location. Appropriately enough, her thesis focuses on scientific communication.[1]
