New director for U.S. Energy Department's mad science wing

On 18 September, President Barack Obama chose Arunava Majumdar as the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the U.S. Department of Energy's new research incubator. Majumdar is currently director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His appointment provides clues to the future direction of an agency that many hope will drive innovation in energy technology and one that has been, until now, famously rudderless.