ARPA-E Head Tapped For Top Research Post

Arun Majumdar, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, was nominated last week to be undersecretary of energy in the Department of Energy. His duties will include oversight of DOE’s R&D and environmental programs, including cleanups at the department’s nuclear weapons complexes. Majumdar has served as director of ARPA-E since 2009, when it was created to select, direct, and fund advanced, high-risk energy technologies during early stages of development. Majumdar has been acting undersecretary since earlier this year when another acting undersecretary, Cathy Zoi, resigned. Majumdar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have common ties, going back to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which Chu led and where Majumdar served as associate director for energy and environment. He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1985 and a Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of California, Berkeley.