AAPG GEO-DC Blog

Senate confirms USGS & ARPA-E Directors

Dr. Marcia K. McNutt was nominated by Pres. Obama in July 2009 to serve as Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and as science advisor to the Secretary of Interior. Her nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last night.

The Senate also confirmed Dr. Arun Majumdar as Director of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E). This new agency, modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will focus on disruptive energy technology research. It will focus on high risk, high potential return research using approaches pioneered in the venture capital industry.

The White House issued the following short biographical summaries for Drs. McNutt and Majumdar:

Dr. Marcia K. McNutt, Nominee for Director of the United States Geological Survey and Science Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior
Dr. Marcia McNutt studied geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California and earned her PhD there in Earth Sciences in 1978. She spent 3 years with the USGS in California working on earthquake prediction. She joined the faculty at MIT in 1982 where she was appointed the Griswold Professor of Geophysics and served as Director of the Joint Program in Oceanography & Applied Ocean Science & Engineering, a joint program offered by both MIT & the Woods Hole Oceanography Institution. Marcia has participated in 15 major oceanographic expeditions and served as chief scientist on more than half of those voyages. She has published 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles and also chaired the President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration convened by President Clinton to examine the possibility of initiating a major US program in exploring the oceans. She is a fellow for the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Association of Geodesy. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and serves on numerous evaluation and advisory boards for institutions such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Stanford University, Harvard University and Science Magazine.

Arun Majumdar, Nominee for Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, Department of Energy
Arun Majumdar is currently the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He has had a highly distinguished research career in the science and engineering of energy conversion, transport, and storage ranging from molecular and nanoscale level to large energy systems. For his pioneering work, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2005. At Berkeley Labs and UC Berkeley, he helped shape several strategic initiatives in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy as well as energy storage, and testified before Congress on how to reduce energy consumption in buildings. He has served on the advisory committee of the National Science Foundation’s engineering directorate, was a member of the advisory council to the materials sciences and engineering division of DOE’s Basic Energy Sciences, and was an advisor on nanotechnology to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Majumdar has also been an entrepreneur, and has served as an advisor to startup companies and venture capital firms in the silicon valley. He received his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985 and his PhD in 1989 from the University of California, Berkeley.