obama chooses physicist steven chu as energy secretary

Another Asian American makes it into Obama's cabinet. Today, the news emerged that President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary: Officials say Obama chooses energy, EPA posts.

Chu was one of three scientists who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997 for work in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. That's right, baby. Nobel laureate. But that's only the start of what makes him awesome.

He's 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 for research into alternative and renewable energy as a way to combat global warming.

That experience will be useful as the next energy secretary, as Obama has said that he wants to spend billions of dollars to promote alternative energy sources and create millions of green energy jobs. More on Chu here: Obama chooses Steven Chu for Energy Secretary: report. And here: Steven Chu, next Energy Secretary.