Majumdar to lead ARPA-E

Last week the White House nominated Arun Majumdar to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–E).

Based on the Defense Department’s DARPA research agency , ARPA–E was established in 2007 as a semi-autonomous agency within the US Department of Energy to conduct high-risk, high-reward energy research. Funding for the agency was only delivered in February this year.

Majumdar is currently associate laboratory director for Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a material scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Steven Chu , the head of DOE, used to be his boss.

Unlike most research organizations, Chu has stated that he hopes ARPA–E funded research centers will be based around attracting the best people to work on problems—they won’t be hired for specific projects. It’s a similar working principle to how the Manhattan Project , which created the atomic bomb worked.

Under Chu’s vision highly qualified scientists will stay at ARPA–E centers for about five years before moving back to academia or industry.

Majumdar helped shape several strategic initiatives in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy storage, and has experience in testifying in front of Congress—where he spoke to them 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 adviser on nanotechnology to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

More importantly for this position, Majumdar has been an entrepreneur, and has served as an adviser to startup companies and venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. This experience—between the borders of industry and science—should help build on Chu’s strategic vision for ARPA–E; and on how the agency will interact between academia and business. One of Majumdar’s hardest challendges will be deciding how “high-risk” research will be at these centers.

Paul Guinnessy