Lauding UC Berkeley for educating and empowering bright minds to serve the nation, in 1962 President John F. Kennedy said: "I am talking to the future leaders of this state and country who recognize their responsibilities to the public interest … the New Frontier owes as much to Berkeley as it does to Harvard University." Kennedy’s words to a packed Memorial Stadium were brought to life again as President Barack Obama tapped Berkeley’s best for prominent positions in his administration.
Physicist Steven Chu Ph.D. ’76 and economist Christina Romer have been selected from Berkeley’s faculty to help chart the nation’s course, shaping policy in energy and economics. Along with more than a dozen colleagues who have advised Obama — including Laura D’Andrea Tyson, appointed to the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board — they reflect a long tradition of Berkeley faculty "serving our nation at the highest levels," said Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau.
Steven Chu Ph.D. ’76
Secretary of Energy
The first Nobel laureate to be appointed to a Cabinet position, Steven Chu "has been working at the cutting edge of our nation’s efforts to develop new and cleaner forms of energy," Obama said about his choice for secretary of energy. "He blazed new trails as a scientist, teacher, and administrator."
Chu, 60, outlined his vision for the role of the U.S. Department of Energy. "To support energy research and development that will lead to innovation in the private sector, to nurture broad-based scientific research that is essential for our future prosperity, and to provide scientific leadership to minimize the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons," he said. "What the world does in the coming decade will have enormous consequences that will last for centuries."
A fellow physicist and colleague of Chu’s for three decades, Chancellor Birgeneau said, "We regard him as our Berkeley messiah for clean alternative energy research. Now, he can be the messiah for the whole country."
Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Philomathia Chair in Alternative Energy at Berkeley, Chu is a tireless champion of research to mitigate global warming who has used his prominence to campaign for alternative energy sources and greater energy efficiency. During a lecture in Washington last June, he opined that new houses could be made energy efficient with an investment of $1,000, "but the American consumer would rather have a granite countertop."
Chu calls himself the academic "black sheep" in a family of accomplished scholars because he’s the only one with just one advanced degree — a Ph.D. in physics from Berkeley in 1976. Working at AT&T Bell Laboratories, he conducted research that led to his shared 1997 Nobel Prize in physics for developing methods of using laser light to create "optical molasses" that supercools and traps atoms. Chu was a professor at Stanford University from 1987 until 2004, when he accepted the directorship of LBNL.
With Chu at the helm, LBNL has partnered with Berkeley on leading energy research, including a 10-year, $500 million grant from BP to establish the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), aimed at developing new biofuels. Chu also spearheaded the Helios project to tap sunlight for renewable energy, and leveraged lab expertise to attract the Department of Energy’s Joint Bioenergy Institute to make cellulosic biomass a viable source for advanced transportation fuels.
"LBNL has been transformed under his leadership," said Berkeley Lab Interim Director Paul Alivisatos. "Today we have new programs that bring together scientists from diverse disciplines to work on biofuels, soft X-ray science, solar energy, carbon management, battery technologies, dark matter, and dark
energy, to mention just a few."
Christina Romer
Chair, Council of Economic Advisors
In the midst of a housing market meltdown, industry bailouts, and the highest job losses in nearly two decades, President Obama selected Berkeley’s Christina Romer as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), praising her as "one of the foremost experts on economic crises — and how to solve them."
Romer will head up the three-member CEA, a policy think tank within the White House that produces an annual economic report for Congress. A leading authority on the Great Depression, Romer, 50, has done "groundbreaking research on many of the topics our administration will confront — from tax policy to fighting recessions," Obama said in announcing her nomination. "Her clear-eyed, independent analyses have received praise from both conservative and liberal thinkers alike."
Said Chancellor Birgeneau, "There is no more important issue today than the economy and no one more prepared to help the Obama administration move the country forward than Professor Romer."
Maurice Obstfeld, a Berkeley economics professor and an expert on monetary and international economics, echoed the sentiment. "Given the economic challenges we are facing, the country needs a top macroeconomist heading the Council of Economic Advisors," he said.
Romer is the Class of 1957 Professor of Economics and has taught at Berkeley since 1988. She has been a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1986 and served on a committee charged with officially determining when a recession has started and stopped.
The recipient of a 1994 Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award and an American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow, Romer has written extensively about monetary and fiscal policy, the causes of and sources of recovery from the Great Depression, and macroeconomic fluctuations over the 20th century.
Romer’s husband, David Romer, also is a Berkeley economics professor specializing in monetary policy, and the two have long collaborated on papers and research. The results of one joint project — looking at the ways that tax cuts affect both the economy and the government budget — surprised both of them. While tax cuts provide a powerful short-run stimulus to the economy, the pair found little evidence that cuts restrain government spending.
"It turns out that tax cuts have led, eventually, to tax increases," said Christina Romer. "Basically, something has to give. What we thought gave when you cut taxes was spending, but we seem to find that in postwar U.S. history what actually gives is the tax cut itself."
As consultants to Obama during the campaign and transition to Washington, Christina and David encountered what they referred to as the president’s quest for intellectual rigor. Early on, they were asked to help craft talking points for a speech about the economy. Their first draft was sent back — with a request for more research and better documentation. "Of course we sent back more material," recalled David Romer. "With footnotes."
next article: Shaping Cal’s financial future
