Eliane Aberdam studied composition at the Conservatoire National de Région in Grenoble (solfege, piano, and music theory) and pursued her studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance from 1983 to 1988 under Mark Kopytman and Mendi Rodan. She received a masters degree in music (composition, musical analysis, orchestral conducting) from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA) in 1992, where she studied composition under George Crumb, writing a masters’ thesis in composition. She was awarded a William Penn Fellowship by the state of Pennsylvania. From 1990 to 1992, she taught French at Drexel University. From 1992 to 1993, she taught composition, harmony, music theory, and music history at the Conservatoire National. From 1993 to 1995, she studied composition at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Olly Wilson, Richard Felciano, and Jorge Liderman, as well as electroacoustics and psychoacoustics with David Wessel. During her time there, she worked as an asistant in the department of music and was awarded the Jack and Margaret Arends Memorial Scholarship (1993) and a Hertz Fellowship (1994). In 1994, she was awarded the “Row Twelve” prize for Baal Shem Tov. In 1995 she was awarded the the Marin Symphony prize for Reflets sur la Cité Brumeuse and the University of California, Berkeley Nicola de Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition. In 1996, she received a grant from the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund to participate in the Cursus at IRCAM and in the Royaumont Academy Voix Nouvelles.