Democratic officials close to the transition team say that Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, appears to be increasingly on track to become energy secretary. A Chinese-American, Chu is a professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California-Berkeley and has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004, where he has pushed aggressively for research into alternative energy as a way to combat global warming. It is the oldest of the Energy Department's national laboratories, but does only unclassified work and in recent years under Chu has been at the center of research into biofuels and solar technologies. Chu has been a strong advocate for the need to engage scientists in the search for ways to combat global warming by replacing fossil fuels with other energy sources such as biofuels and the sun. *gasp An actual scientist in charge of US energy policy?? and a chinese one at that? The world is a'changin. The US could see some definite improvement with this guy in an important position... the man has a background in quantum physics 0_o
