Elena Nilsen

Elena Nilsen is a Research Chemist at the U.S. Geological Survey Oregon Water Science Center and a Program Manager of the Water Quality Processes Program for the Water Mission Area. She studies contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and other threats to aquatic food webs in rivers, estuaries, and coastal ocean habitats. She also studies uptake of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in aquatic food webs and she serves as a co-lead of the Environmental Health Program’s PFAS Interdisciplinary Science Team. She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in biology at UC San Diego and a PhD in marine geochemistry at UC Santa Cruz.  She started with the USGS as a Mendenhall Post-doctoral Fellow with the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in the San Francisco Bay Area studying impacts of contamination on estuarine ecology and geochemistry.  She has been with the Oregon Water Science Center since 2007.

Research Interests

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) including per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS); sediment and tissue chemistry; contaminant impacts on First Food species (e.g., Pacific lamprey, white sturgeon, salmonids, shellfish); primary productivity, food web dynamics; biomarkers; and synergistic effects.