“Energy and the Industrial Revolution: Past, Present, and Future”
Arun Majumdar
Jay Precourt Professor, Stanford University
Former VP of Energy, Google.org
Friday, November 21, 2014
3:00 p.m., 34-101
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA
Arun Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor at Stanford University, where he serves on the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy.
Prior to joining Stanford, he was the Vice President for Energy at Google, where he created several energy technology initiatives and advised the company on its broader energy strategy. He continues to be a consultant to Google on energy.
In October 2009, Dr. Arun Majumdar was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to become the Founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), where he served till June 2012. Between March 2011 and June 2012, Dr. Majumdar also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Energy, and a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy.
Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Dr. Majumdar was the Almy and Agnes Maynard Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research career includes the science and engineering of nanoscale materials and devices as well as large engineered systems.
Dr. Majumdar is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 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. He currently serves on the US Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, the Council for the National Academy of Engineering and the Electric Power Research Institute, as well as the Science Board of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is a member of the International Advisory Panel for Energy of the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry and the US delegation for the US-India Track II dialogue on climate change and energy.