Kelsi Perttula, PhD, MS Faculty Profile

Photo of Kelsi Perttula

Kelsi  Perttula, PhD, MS

Assistant Professor

Department of Public Health

Professor Perttula began as a lecturer at CSUEB and has been with the  CSUEB Health Sciences/Public Health Department since Spring 2020. She has also lectured chemistry in CSUEB's Chemistry Department. She thoroughly enjoys teaching the diverse and vibrant student community at CSUEB. She has lived in the Bay Area all of her adult life. After college, she worked 10 years as a forensic scientist, mostly for San Mateo County, but pivoted to a career in academia and public health after starting a family. In her spare time, she plots ways to make her kids eat more vegetables. 

Professor Perttula's research has focused on environmental exposure assessment, environmental toxicology, and molecular epidemiology. Her projects have centered on case-control samples from prospective cohorts that are extracted for lipophilic compounds and analyzed with high-resolution LCMS.  She applies data-adaptive biostatistical methods to the resulting metabolomic data to discover environmental factors of disease.  


  • PhD: Environmental Health Sciences, UC Berkeley
  • MS: Chemistry, San Jose State University
  • BS: Chemistry, UC Berkeley

Not teaching this semester.

(Selected Publications)

Kado, M; Perttula, K; Noth, EM; Moore, D, Nguyen, P; Perrino, C; Nicas, M; Hammond, SK; "Elevator Ventilation and SARS-CoV-2-Relevant Particulate Matter Removal in Three Older California Elevators", Indoor Air, vol. 2023, Article ID 7664472, 10 pages, 2023.

Petrick, L; Imani, P; Perttula, K; Yano, Y; Whitehead, T; Metayer, C; Rappaport, S. Untargeted metabolomics of newborn dried blood spots reveals sex-specific associations with pediatric acute myeloid leukemia. Leukemia Research, 106585, 2021.

Schiffman, C; Petrick, L; Perttula, Kelsi; Yano, Y; Carlsson, H; Whitehead, T; Metayer, C; Hayes, J; Edmands, WMB; Rappaport, S; Dudoit, S; Filtering procedures for untargeted LC-MS metabolomics data, BMC Bioinformatics, 20 (1), 2019.

Petrick, L; Schiffman, C; Edmands, WMB; Yano, Y; Perttula, K; Whitehead, T; Metayer, C; Wheelock, CE; Arora, M; Grigoryan, H; Carlsson, H; Dudoit, S; Rappaport, SM, Metabolomics of neonatal blood spots reveal distinct phenotypes of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia and potential effects of early-life nutrition, Cancer Letters, 452, 2019.

Perttula, K; Schiffman, C; Edmands, WMB; Petrick, L; Grigoryan, H; Cai, X; Gunter, MJ; Naccarati, A; Polidoro, S; Dudoit, S; Rappaport, S; Untargeted lipidomic features associated with colorectal cancer in a prospective cohort, BMC cancer, 18 (1), 2018.

Petrick, L; Edmands, WMB; Schiffman, C; Grigoryan, H; Perttula, K; Yano, Y; Dudoit, S; Whitehead, T; Metayer, C; Rappaport, S; An untargeted metabolomics method for archived newborn dried blood spots in epidemiologic studies, Metabolomics, 13 (3), 27, 2017.

Perttula, K; Edmands, WMB; Grigoryan, H; Cai, X; Iavarone, AT; Gunter, MJ; Naccarati, A; Polidoro, S; Hubbard, A; Vineis, P; Evaluating ultra-long-chain fatty acids as biomarkers of colorectal cancer risk, Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Biomarkers, 25 (8) 2016.