Anna Robuck

Dr. Anna Ruth Robuck is an environmental chemist and oceanographer studying chemical and plastic pollution as a Chemist with the US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development. Robuck’s research focuses on describing the occurrence and impacts of human-created contaminants leveraging expertise in oceanography, marine ecology, environmental analytical chemistry, toxicology, data science, and water quality. Robuck specializes in the measurement of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) with experience characterizing legacy and novel PFAS in water, sediment, multiple types of passive samplers, and biological tissues using liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry platforms. She is an expert in suspect and non-targeted analysis of emerging contaminants using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) via Orbitrap instrumentation, with a particular focus on identification and characterization of novel PFAS. Robuck also possesses prolific experience assessing microplastics in biological tissues using spectroscopic and pyrolytic techniques.

Prior to joining EPA, Robuck was a research fellow in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where her work focused on relating markers of disease to plastic and chemical exposure in diverse human populations. She earned a Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography within the STEEP Superfund Research Program. Her dissertation focused on emerging contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and plastics in water and wildlife using tandem and high-resolution mass spectrometry. Her dissertation was supported by the highly selective NOAA Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship and the ORISE Research Fellowship within the US EPA. Anna also holds a BS in Marine Biology and Chemistry, and a MSc in Marine Science and GIS, both from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.