Steven Chu

Professor Steven Chu known for his research regarding the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Afterwards, he served as the 12th United States Secretary of Energy from 2009 to 2013, where he was a vocal advocate for renewable energy and environmental research. Returning to Stanford, his group has focused on biophysics, energy, and environmental technology. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Academia Sinica, and is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Korean Academy of Science and Engineering.