Steven Chu

摘要

As a leading and active scientist, Steven Chu broke the mold when he became energy secretary of the United States in 2009. In his four years of service, he made the Department of Energy more innovative, launching the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy to support projects not yet ready for private investment. He also created Innovation Hubs to bring people from different disciplines together on energy problems and rejuvenated funding for solar research. Chu, who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics and directed the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before his government appointment, is now restarting his research group at Stanford. In a conversation with David Talbot, chief correspondent of MIT Technology Review, he reflected on his time with the federal government and talked about the research and technology questions absorbing him today.