Thursday, December 11, 2008

Steven Chu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for energy secretary

Steven Chu, the 60 years old Nobel Prize-winning physicist is Barack Obama's choice for energy secretary.

Since 2004, Chu has been director of the Berkeley lab, the oldest of the Energy Department's national laboratories, with its 4,000 employees and a budget of $650 million. The laboratory does only unclassified work and under Chu has been a center of research into biofuels and solar energy technologies. He is a former head of the physics department at Stanford University.

Chu has been a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming.

Chu, a Chinese-American, has in recent years campaigned to bring together a cross-section of scientific disciplines to find ways to counter climate change.

Chu as energy secretary would head a department with a $25 billion budget and 14,000 employees and more than 193,000 contract workers. Two-thirds of its budget involves activities related to nuclear weapons research and maintenance.

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