President Obama announces more DOE nominations, including science director

WASHINGTON, D.C.— President Barack Obama recently announced plans to nominate two people to top U.S. Department of Energy posts, including a director of the Office of Science.

The Office of Science is responsible for 10 of the 17 DOE labs, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Obama nominated Marc Kastner to serve as director of the Office of Science and Franklin Orr to serve as DOE under secretary for science and energy.

“I am confident that these outstanding individuals will greatly serve the American people in their new roles, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come,” Obama said in a press release.

Here is more information about the two candidates:

Marc Kastner

Kastner is the dean of the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a position he has held since 2007. Previously, Kastner was the department head of the MIT Department of Physics from 1998 to 2007.

From 1993 to 1998, he directed MIT’s Center for Materials Science and Engineering, and from 1989 to 1992, he was the Associate Director of MIT’s Consortium for Superconducting Electronics. In 1989, Dr. Kastner was named Donner Professor of Science at MIT, and from 1983 to 1987 he served as head of the MIT Department of Physics Division of Atomic, Condensed Matter, and Plasma Physics.

He joined the MIT Department of Physics in 1973 and was previously a research fellow at Harvard University. Kastner received an S.B., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Franklin Orr

Orr is the director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, a position he has held since 2009. Orr has been an associate professor and professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering since 1985.

From 2002 to 2008, Orr served as the director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford. He was the dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford from 1994 to 2002 and the chairman of the Department of Petroleum Engineering from 1991 to 1994. Orr held several other research positions from 1970 to 1985 in New Mexico, Texas, and Washington, D.C.

Orr received a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.