Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Environmental Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1999
  • M.S., Water Resources, Cairo University, 1994
  • B.S., Civil Engineering, Cairo University, 1992

Dr. Tarek Saba is a Principal Scientist in Exponent's Environmental & Earth Sciences practice and the Burlington, Massachusetts, Office Director. As a consultant and expert witness, Dr. Saba advises clients in matters involving claims of liability for environmental contamination and associated response costs.

Dr. Saba has 27 years of professional and academic experience in reconstructing events that led to claims of contamination by applying his knowledge of industrial operations and processes, waste handling practices, prevailing laws and regulations over different time frames, chemical forensics, fate and transport analysis, and hydrogeology. Dr. Saba also allocates contamination liability and cleanup costs among responsible parties under different legal frameworks such as CERCLA, RCRA, NRDA, and product liability claims, and in different industrial settings, such as airports, manufacturing facilities, hydraulic fracturing, natural gas storage fields, petroleum refineries, salt domes, manufactured gas plants (MGPs), landfills, coal ash basins, coal mines, salvage yards, pesticide and herbicide manufacturing facilities, military sites, airports, and shipyards, among many others. 

Dr. Saba's expertise includes chemical fingerprinting and evaluating the environmental chemistry of different chemical groups such as PFAS, PCBs, dioxins and furans, metals, PAHs, petroleum products (e.g., gasoline, diesel fuels) and petroleum additives (e.g., MTBE), LNAPL, DNAPL, chlorinated solvents (PCE, TCE, and their degradation products and additives such as 1,4-dioxane), tar and creosote, and radioactive compounds (e.g., radium). Before joining Exponent, Dr. Saba worked on developing groundwater remediation technology as a subcontractor for EPA. .