Rock Star Energy Secretary Rides $5,000 Bike
Berkeley prof turned cabinet official Steven Chu profiled in Rolling Stone.
By JACKSON WEST
Updated 3:00 PM PST, Mon, Jun 29, 2009
Barack Obama may be the first rock star president, but it was Steven Chu who got the Rolling Stone profile treatment.
Before joining the cabinet, Chu was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he oversaw the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Oh, and then there's the Nobel Prize in physics he won back in 1997 for his work with lasers.
But just how Berkeley can Chu be?
For one, he doesn't own a car, preferring to ride his $5,000 carbon fiber Colnago.
But he's no hippy -- he also spent time at Stanford, and loves his gadgets, carrying both a BlackBerry and an iPhone.
Nice to see a geek make good, but he'll have his work cut out for him in Washington.
After all, the $38 billion his Department of Energy was given by Congress to spend on developing green energy solutions may seem like a lot.
But compared to the trillions involved in the world oil economy, it's only a drop in the well.
Jackson West wishes Chu luck trying to sell alternative transportation to the NASCAR set.
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Jun 29, 2009 2:41 PM PST
You Might Like
You have 2000 characters left
