Arun Majumdar is a materials scientist, engineer, and Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay graduate who was President Barack Obama's nominee for the Under Secretary of Energy between November 30, 2011 and May 15, 2012. He formerly ran the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he was also deputy director of LBNL as well as professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He was nominated to be the first director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and appointed to that position in September 2009.On May 15, 2012, the White House withdrew Majumdar's nomination.On Dec 17, 2012, Google announced that Arun joined Google to drive Google.org’s energy initiatives and advise the company on their broader energy strategy.Arun is a leading scientist in the fields of thermoelectric materials, heat and mass transfer, thermal management, and waste heat recovery. He has published several hundred papers, patents, and conference proceedings, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.On August 16, 2012, Arun Majumdar co-published a paper in Nature with United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu on Opportunities and Challenges for a Sustainable Energy Future, as well as gave a talk on the paper on the subject at Stanford University.
$19 Million