Arun Majumdar, most recently the director of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, has joined Google to lead its energy strategy.
“One of the world’s biggest challenges is bringing reliable, sustainable and affordable energy to everyone,” said Matthew Stepka, vice president of Google.org. “We need a new energy blueprint for the future—the latest advances in technology have the potential to bring us closer to that goal than ever before.
Majumdar’s bio:
Dr. Arun Majumdar served as the first Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), the country’s only agency devoted to transformational energy research and development, from October 2009 to June 2012. In addition, he served as the Acting Under Secretary of Energy.
Prior to joining ARPA-E, Dr. Majumdar was 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. His highly distinguished research career includes the science and engineering of energy conversion, transport, and storage ranging from molecular and nanoscale level to large energy systems. In 2005, Dr. Majumdar was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for this pioneering work.
At Berkeley Labs and UC Berkeley, Dr. Majumdar helped shape several strategic initiatives in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy storage. He also testified before Congress on how to reduce energy consumption in buildings. Dr. Majumdar has also 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 the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences, and was an advisor on nanotechnology to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Additionally, Dr. Majumdar has served as an advisor to startup companies and venture capital firms in the Silicon Valley.
He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.
