DOE's Exiting Science Boss Steven Koonin: 'I've Been Effective'

DOE's Exiting Science Boss Steven Koonin: 'I've Been Effective'

by Adrian Cho on 11 November 2011, 1:30 PM

Two days ago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science, would step down on 18 November. Yesterday, Koonin ticked off some of his accomplishments for ScienceInsider, explained his reasons for leaving and his plans for the future.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/steven-koonin-to-step-down-as-doe.html">Observers have said that Koonin was frustrated by his position, which nominally gave him responsibility for scientific activities throughout DOE. In practice, however, it gave him no control over budgets—not even for DOE's $4.8 billion Office of Science, whose budget is controlled by its director, William Brinkman. Koonin acknowledges that having the "power of the pulpit but not the purse strings" was an issue, but says he was effective nonetheless. "It terms of what actually gets done, I think I influenced things quite a bit," Koonin says. He's stepping down now, he says, because he's accomplished much of what he set out do to when he took the post in May 2009.

In particular, http://energy.gov/quadrennial-technology-review">Koonin led DOE's first Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR), released on 27 September. That 159-page document had three goals, Koonin says: To provide a framework by which experts and nonexperts alike could familiarize themselves with U.S. energy infrastructure and issues, to make clear to all interested parties who in DOE does what, and to lay out the principles and priorities that should shape DOE's future efforts. "You're the DOE," Koonin says. "Exactly what do you do in energy and what impact does it have?" Koonin says that when he undertook the QTR in January, he told Secretary of Energy Steven Chu that he would leave when it was completed.

Prior to coming to DOE, Koonin served as chief scientist at British Petroleum, and he has pushed for research that's more directly oriented toward the world's looming energy problem. For example, under Koonin's watch, DOE founded three "energy innovation hubs," multidisciplinary institutions tasked with tackling a specific energy-related science topic, such as simulating nuclear reactors, making buildings more energy-efficient, and generating fuels using sunlight. (DOE has proposed five other hubs.) "The hubs are really wonderful," Koonin says. "If you look at what they've accomplished and where they're headed, they're just what we need."

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