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Rise & Research

Joshua Tropp on PFAS, his Thanksgiving Test and the Answers Science Gives Us

By Texas Tech University

October 7^th, 2025

Welcome to Rise & Research where cutting-edge discoveries are made as accessible as your morning coffee. This monthly feature offers a closer look at the transformative research happening on our campus. Pull up a chair as we talk with faculty who are pushing boundaries while creating opportunities for the next generation.

In this second installment, Lucy Greenberg sits down with Joshua Tropp at Snooze A.M. Eatery to discuss his love of science and the impact it can make on the world.

It’s a rainy Monday morning and Joshua Tropp beats me to Snooze A.M. Eatery. He wanted to get some coffee, a secondary passion, into his system before we talk about his primary passion, science.

It’s not so much science that preoccupies Tropp’s attention as the real-world problems it empowers him to solve.

“If I’m awake, I’m probably at work,” says the assistant professor in Texas Tech University’s College of Arts & Sciences. “It’s not something I complain about because this is the career I wanted to pursue, and this is what’s required to get these kinds of projects off the ground.”

We’re sitting down for breakfast to talk about one of his recent research projects – developing testing strips to detect Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Lubbock drinking water.

Try saying that five times fast.

As complicated as it sounds, Tropp explains the concept quite simply.

“When fluorine bonds to carbon, it creates a substance that’s not found in the natural world,” he explains. “Because of this, our body has no way to break this down, so it just accumulates into our blood.”

PFAS were the byproduct of trying to solve everyday problems. We enjoy eggs cooked on nonstick pans and we stay dry because of the fluorinated coatings that cover our rain jackets. Unfortunately, once those chemical bonds are created, they’re slow to break down and end up in our air, water and soil, becoming resilient intruders.

As Tropp explains this phenomenon, I look cautiously into the glass of tap water the waitress pours. I pick up my coffee instead, knowing full well it still contains tap water, but its roasted scent seems less threatening.

The implications of this foreign invader in the human body are as it sounds – not good. But before that problem can be tackled, we must locate it.

That’s where Tropp’s research comes in.

Q: How did you get involved in researching PFAS?

A: My dissertation work at the University of Southern Mississippi was on environmental sensing technologies. We were close to the Gulf Coast so there was funding available related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. I was on this collaborative six-institution grant between ten research groups, where we were making sensors for heavy metal contamination, externalities from agricultural runoff and other pollutants. Many of these pollutants were associated with fossil fuel combustion and oil spills.

That required me to make these portable sensors to detect trace amounts of environmental pollutants in real-world environments, similar to what is currently needed with PFAS. I published six papers in this area and deployed some of the sensors out at the Deepwater Horizon site on a research vessel.

When I came to Texas Tech, I had a working version of this technology. When I heard how prevalent PFAS research is here, it became a compelling direction. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) came here about five years ago to do research because of the Reese Air Force Base and its former use of firefighting foams. Those foams have PFAS in them, so this area was determined to be an exposure site.

Residents in Lubbock were tested and researchers found they had two –to -four times the usual concentration of various PFAS in their blood. So, this is a unique and important place to do this research, and there’s a large population of professors at Texas Tech focused on it.

Q: What makes your detection technology unique and why are you focusing your funding there?

A: I have a strong bias for sensing because you can’t solve a problem you don’t understand. It all begins at the sensor. Just take the COVID-19 pandemic for example. Imagine that crisis without those paper-based assays (at-home tests). Getting those into citizens’ hands changed everything. It was the most information-rich pandemic we’ve ever had as a civilization.

Imagine what it would be like not to have that technology. That’s where we currently are with PFAS. If we could test local water for PFAS, it would be transformative for society. We’d empower the community by giving them such an easy readout. They would dip a strip in their tap water, and it would go from blue to red to orange, or so on. They’d be able to scan that strip with their smartphone on an app and discover exactly how much, and what kind of these chemicals are in their water. Alternatively, households typically would send water samples to certified labs for testing, a process that can cost between $250 to $600 per sample, depending on the level of analysis. The turnaround time for results can then be up to six weeks.

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Q: How does PFAS affect people living in West Texas?

A: Long-term PFAS exposure has been linked to certain cancers, elevated cholesterol, immune system effects, and other health concerns. What people need to understand is that there’s no natural mechanism to remove PFAS from your body. What happens is they accumulate over time and every time you have a sip of water, even if there’s a millionth of a millionth of a gram in there, it’s still there. That said, you should still drink your water. Many researchers are looking into how to remove PFAS from the body, my research is focused on getting the necessary data into those people’s hands.

Q: What problem are you hoping to solve?

A: Like I said, I’m focused on the sensor. My goal is to collaborate and interact with others on campus that are doing public health or agricultural research. So, all these people from different disciplines are attacking the PFAS problem and we’re attacking it from different angles. But the thing that’s missing, the thing that’s hard for those researchers to get, is quantitative data. My goal is to get them that.

Q: Why did you pick Snooze A.M. Eatery for breakfast?

A: I mentioned my hours are nuts. I’ve found 10 or 12 hours will go by, and I haven’t left my office or lab. So very rarely do I leave my little corner of campus. But when I do, Snooze A.M. is walkable and has bottomless coffee.

Whenever we have visiting speakers, I typically bring them here, and then I get to walk them through campus. I recently had colleagues visit from MIT and North Carolina State. Not only did they enjoy the food here, but they especially enjoyed the walk over. Both of them were surprised by how beautiful the campus was.

Another reason I come here is that I get some of my best ideas while I’m walking. When I move around, my brain can passively solve problems.

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Q: Why do you choose to conduct your research at Texas Tech?

A: What guides my research is it must pass the Thanksgiving dinner test. If I explain my research at Thanksgiving dinner, would people want to listen, or would they change the subject? I want my students to be able to go home and do the same. Texas Tech was the place I could do that kind of work.

When I visited Texas Tech, I toured the Experimental Sciences Building II and the department was offering me half a wing of the newest interdisciplinary research facility. They were offering something like 1,700 square-feet of space. I have colleagues who are starting their career and basically making do with a supply closet, so this was an unbelievably strong offer.

I’ve been everywhere. I did my research at Northwestern University, which is a top 10 school, right? And their labs were no better than ours. There was no difference in the quality of the lab I was in before and where I am in now. In fact, I would say the space I’m in now is better than almost anywhere that I’ve ever worked or visited.

Q: What does From Here, It’s Possible™ mean to you?

A: I think that Texas Tech is a platform that launches people. If you think about this place as what it is, a major research university with world-class resources, the only limitation is how hard you’re willing to work.

The students in my lab work incredibly hard. I have eight graduate students and 11 undergraduate students. They’re from various disciplines but I mentor all 19 of them.

I’ve found that some of the undergraduate students are so highly motivated that I can treat them as graduate students. Kaleb Jewell (chemical engineering) visited the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) this summer and worked on semiconductors which was funded through the CHIPS and Science Act. I had another student, Helena Garza (biology) go to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to study nanotechnology for bioimaging. Both students are undergraduates, keep in mind. Texas Tech is launching them into research in ways I never experienced as an undergraduate and watching them thrive has been one of the most rewarding parts of my job.

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What's For Breakfast?

Snooze A.M. Eatery

413 University Ave #200

Lubbock, Texas 79401

· Corned Beef Hash

· Protein BLT Bowl

· House Coffee

About Joshua Tropp

Degrees: B.A. Washington & Jefferson College, 2015; Ph.D. University of Southern Mississippi, 2020; Postdoctoral Research, Northwestern University, 2023.

Follow his work on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the research opportunities at Texas Tech, visit our Graduate School.

© 2026 Texas Tech University

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