MIT Research Director May Head Energy Department
From Albuquerque Business Journal
By Gary Gerew
President Barack Obama is expected to nominate air quality expert Gina McCarthy to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz to head the Department of Energy, according to a Reuters report.
The DOE is in charge of the Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.
Moniz, a former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, is director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative. As undersecretary, he led a comprehensive review of the nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program .
By choosing Moniz, Obama would put another scientist at the head of the Department of Energy, despite a sometimes rocky tenure for Steve Chu.
At MIT, Moniz led intensive studies about the future of coal, nuclear energy and natural gas, and he helped attract funding and research momentum to energy projects on campus.
