President Obama announced in November his plans to nominate Franklin "Lynn" Orr, director of Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy, as under secretary of science at the Department of Energy. If confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate, Orr, '69, will retire from the University.
Orr served as dean of the School of Earth Sciences from 1994 to 2002 and has overseen the Precourt Institute since its founding in 2009. He directed Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project from 2002 to 2008. At the DOE, his responsibilities would include the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford.
"Providing the energy the world needs to support modern societies and at the same time reducing the impacts of energy use are central challenges for this century," said Orr, 66.
