Elias Brinks earned his doctorate at Leiden University in The Netherlands with a study of the neutral hydrogen distribution in Messier 31, the Andromeda galaxy. Following his PhD, he spent almost 3 years as  a Postdoctoral Fellow at ESO Garching and another 3 years as Senior Research Associate at the former Royal Greenwich Observatory. He then moved to the USA to take up a position as Associate Scientist at the NRAO-VLA in Socorro, New Mexico, where he worked for the better part of 6 years. He subsequently moved to “Old” Mexico, helping his Mexican colleagues set up a Department of Astronomy at the University of Guanajuato and, as staff scientist at INAOE in Puebla, to contribute to efforts to build the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT). Since September 2004 he is back in Europe, as Full Professor at the University of Hertfordshire. 

His current research interests focus on the structure and kinematics of galaxies in the Local Volume. This includes studies of the interstellar medium and star formation properties of galaxies, both large and small, studies of the accelerated evolution of galaxies as they fall into galaxy clusters, interactions and mergers of galaxies and the formation, as a byproduct of such interactions, of Tidal Dwarf Galaxies. Although he uses instruments covering most of the electromagnetic spectrum, his expertise lies especially in the (sub) millimetre and radio regime to probe the atomic and molecular gas components in galaxies.

Elias Brinks has taught a large range of subjects, from 1st year undergraduate introductory mathematics and physics to final year and MSc level specialised courses in astrophysics.