Obama picks nobel prize winner physist for environment

Barack Obama is to nominate leading scientist Steven Chu as his Energy Secretary, US media have reported.

Mr Chu is an energy specialist and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Mr Obama will pick former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

And Carol Browner, EPA chief under Bill Clinton, will be Mr Obama's "energy czar", according to media reports.

Ms Browner will coordinate energy, climate and environmental policy across a number of different government departments.

The incoming president has said that tackling climate change will be one of his administration's top priorities.

Mr Chu shared the 1997 Nobel Prize for physics for his work on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light and is a leader in the field to combat climate change using scientific methods.