Secretary of Energy

Name: Steven Chu
Hometown: St. Louis, Missouri
Current City: Washington, D.C.
Job at time of Appointment: professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Age: 61

The Secretary of Energy position was one of the most anticipated choices of the Obama Cabinet. In recent years, the boundaries of the job description have slowly blended with other cabinet positions. With the success of the Green Jobs movement, the Energy Secretary will have to focus more on jobs and labor. Our relationships with oil producing countries overseas have given the position an international flavor, and in the coming years the Secretary of Energy will have to focus much more on National Security and foreign relations. As America becomes a greener country, the Secretary of Energy will become an important voice within the Cabinet.

Steven Chu attended Berkeley and later became a professor of physics at Stanford University in 1987. Chu comes from a family of scholars; his father earned an advanced chemical engineering degree at MIT while his maternal grandfather earned advanced civil engineering degrees at Cornell University.As a scientist, Chu is known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. He is a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming.