Obama Seeks Chu To Become Energy Secretary Under His Administration

by Can Tran | December 10, 2008 at 02:51 pm

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If Steven Chu accepts Obama's nomination and is confirmed by the US Senate, he could become the next US Secretary of Energy. This would make Steven Chu the second Asian-American cabinet member of the Obama administration. The first Asian-American cabinet member would be retired Army General Eric K. Shinseki, who Obama has picked to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary, CNN reported on Wednesday.

Chu shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics and is a former chairman of the physics department at Stanford University in California and head of the electronics research laboratory at Bell Labs.

The Lawrence Berkeley Web site says Chu was an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change and has guided the laboratory on a new mission to become the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy.

That experience will be useful as the next energy secretary, as Obama wants to spend billions of dollars to promote alternative energy sources and create millions of green energy jobs.

Chu had won the 1997 Nobel Prize for his research in laser cooling and trapping of atoms. Still, it is unknown whether or not Chu will accept Obama's nomination.

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