Dr. Michel Boufadel is a Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering and Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (a top 100 University in the USA). Dr. Boufadel served recently on five National Academies committees in relation to oil spills (2012-2019). He also served on a committee by the Royal Society of Canada on “The impact and behavior of oil in aquatic environments”, and served on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board on natural gas extraction from shale formations (2011-2012).

Dr. Boufadel’s expertise is the study of fate and transport, especially in offshore environments. His work includes the remediation of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and assessment of oil fate in the environment following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Dr. Boufadel's recent work has focused on evaluating resilience at multiple scales using spatial tools and an index that his group developed. Dr. Boufadel has more than 200 refereed articles in publications, such as Marine Pollution Bulletin, NATURE geosciences, Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science, and Environmental Science and Technology.