Nobel physicist Chu in line for Obama energy post Nobel physicist Steven Chu in line for energy post
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama is expected to nominate Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu to become the nation's next energy secretary.
Obama also is poised to select Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency, while one-time EPA administrator Carol Browner would serve in the White House as an overall energy "czar." Jackson worked at the EPA during Browner's tenure, and is former administrator of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
The selection of a scientist rather than a Washington insider as energy secretary suggests that in the Obama administration, energy policy will be directed out of the White House rather than the Energy Department.
Frank Maisano, a Washington-based energy specialist with Bracewell & Giuliani, said Obama has selected "capable, bright people" who will be "solid managers at EPA and the the Department of Energy."
"But it also underscores the high profile the White House will play in energy policy within its own walls," Maisano said.
Chu has served for the last four years as director of the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
He was an early advocate of finding scientific solutions to combat climate change, according to the Berkeley Lab Web site. And during his tenure there, he has worked to make the Berkeley facility a world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly with the development of carbon-neutral energy sources.
In 1997, Chu shared the Nobel Prize in physics for his work to develop methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
david.ivanovich@chron.com
According to reports, Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States, will nominate Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, to be his Secretary of Energy.
Steven Chu in 2005
Chu has been  the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California for the past four years. He shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips for developing ways to cool and trap atoms with a laser light.

In the past, Chu was the head of an electronics lab at the Bell Labs in New Jersey. He has also worked on solar technologies and global warming, and is a professor at the University of California. Chu has worked on ways to develop carbon-neutral energy.

Chu is currently scheduled to travel Asia and Europe and is expected to be back at work on Monday, according to a spokesperson at Lawrence Berkeley.