Nobel Laureate Physicist to Lead DOE

Berkeley physicist Steven Chu will be named the US Secretary of Energy under the Obama administration charged to spearhead a federal department with a $25 billion budget, 14,000 employees and more than 193,000 contract workers.

A 60-year-old Nobel laureate, Chu has been Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since August, 2004 (with a staff of 4,000 and a budget of about $600 million). Chu's Nobel credentials will be a first for the cabinet-level energy post in Washington. [Video]

It is expected that the Chu-lead Department of Energy will pay a critical role in the government's efforts in zero-carbon energy development and the climate change mitigation efforts. He may be friendly to the efforts of the Space Frontier Foundation to advance Space-based Solar Power [SSP]. [More Audio/Video on Chu]