Unlike a surface spill, the crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico is gushing forth deep underwater, so no one is sure where or when it will all emerge. Michel Boufadel, professor and chair of Temple's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, seeks to answer these questions in his lab using raw computing power. Boufadel is a veteran oil-spill researcher who is best known for his study of contamination from the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska. In addition to the gulf spill and the Exxon Valdez, he has turned his sights on the new wave of drilling for natural gas in Pennsylvania, in the Marcellus Shale formation. He says he was drawn to the study of engineering because he enjoys logic. "Engineering is a discipline where things have to make sense, where things have to follow a certain logic," Boufadel says.