Reporting from Washington -- With the nomination of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu for Energy secretary, President-elect Barack Obama made sure no one missed the message in the resume.

"His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science," Obama said during a Chicago news conference Monday. "We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action."

Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, headlines a quartet of appointments that includes former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner as a coordinator of energy and climate policy, former New Jersey environmental protection commissioner Lisa Jackson as EPA director, and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley to run the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

With this team, some environmentalists and former federal research scientists expect Obama's White House to break from what they view as the Bush administration's record of overlooking science in favor of politics.

"It's such an incredible contrast, compared to the years of darkness under the current administration, to see a scientist in such a position of authority and influence in the Cabinet," said Alan Nogee, who directs the Clean Energy Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has accused the administration of silencing and overruling scientists in policy-making. "It's night and day."

Critics -- including Nogee's organization and former EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman -- have complained about the influence of industry lobbyists and ideologues on Bush administration decision-making.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Beverly Hills is among the Democrats who repeatedly have accused top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and political advisor Karl Rove, with pressing federal agencies to take positions that put them at odds with their own scientists on energy, global warming and stem cell research.

The critics say many high-ranking scientists have fled federal jobs or have been forced from advisory panels in an effort to tilt agency decision-making to be more favorable to corporate interests or, in at least one case, to help secure reelection of Republicans.

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