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Paul D. Boehm, Ph.D.

Group Vice President & Principal Scientist

Environmental Sciences

Professional Profile


Dr. Boehm has overall responsibility for Exponent’s Environmental business. He has devoted his 31 years of consulting experience to advising industrial, legal, and government clients on scientific aspects of contaminated sediments and terrestrial sites, oil spills, environmental and operational investigations of oil and gas operations, the development of environmental monitoring programs, and the use of environmental forensic methods to apportion liabilities. As an environmental and forensic chemist, his main scientific focus has been on the environmental chemical aspects of aquatic and terrestrial contamination, inclusive of contamination in surface waters, groundwater, soils, and sediments. As an oil spill expert, he has studied and published on the fate and effects of oil spills in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. As a natural gas and petroleum chemist and geochemist, he has investigated the migration of natural gas from storage fields, assessed the exposure of people to petroleum contaminants in toxic tort cases, developed methods to determine the historical contamination and sources of petrogenic materials, and investigated contamination at refineries, fuel terminals, and offshore platforms.

Dr. Boehm’s practice and related scientific work includes providing technical support in legal matters: oil spills, Superfund sites, manufactured gas plant (MGP) and waste disposal sites, medical exposures, transactional disputes, and natural gas storage fields. His extensive knowledge of the strategic application and practice of environmental forensics (geo-chemical fingerprinting, transport and fate, source attribution, and allocation) has been applied to numerous cases involving complex environmental liability and litigation matters. His expertise also includes the transport and fate of chemicals in surface and groundwaters, contaminated sediments assessments, environmental impact assessments for new international capital projects, and environmental studies for LNG projects.

Dr. Boehm has extensive knowledge of oil and chemical industry operations, operational discharges, petroleum crude oil and fuels, and their potential environmental fates and impacts. He has conducted numerous studies related to offshore oil and gas development for industry and for the U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service (MMS). Dr. Boehm was one of the main developers of the Status and Trends – Mussel Watch Program, the first national-scale coastal monitoring effort in the United States, while working as a consultant to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Dr. Boehm has provided scientific and testimonial support to attorneys on environmental claims, toxic torts, maritime pollution cases, and other litigation matters, including providing expert testimony. He has been appointed to serve on several national panels on environmental/ marine pollution and has served on several National Research Council panels.

  • Ph.D., Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, 1977
  • M.S., Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, 1973
  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Rochester, 1970