Steven Chu to speak on clean energy at Stanford student event

By Christine Blackman

U. S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu will return to Stanford on Monday to inspire students to meet the challenges of advancing clean energy.

Stanford's Green Alliance for Innovative Action, a student organization, will host the event in Memorial Auditorium from noon to 1 p.m. Free tickets are available for the event, which is open to Stanford students, faculty and staff. The talk will also be webcast live on the alliance's website, http://gaia.stanford.edu/.

"We expect Dr. Chu's talk to raise awareness on campus about the global energy and climate challenge and inspire students to work on solving the world's biggest problems in the area," said David Gobaud, president of the Associated Students of Stanford University, the student body government.

Chu's lecture is titled, "Meeting the Energy and Climate Challenge."

Chu, the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Emeritus, at Stanford  received the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light.

Prior to his appointment by President Obama in January 2009, Chu was director of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California-Berkeley.

He is an advocate for new solutions in energy and reducing global climate change.

Stanford's student government formed the alliance over the summer of 2009 with the goal of sharing ideas and resources among energy and sustainability efforts across campus. Gobaud has been gathering students to prepare for this event and the spring sustainability summit, called Futurefest.

The Woods Institute for the Environment is one of the event's co-sponsors. 

Free tickets are available (two per Stanford ID) through Friday, March 5, from noon to 1 p. m. in White Plaza (In the Old Union, if raining) and 7-8 p. m. in the Old Union.

Following the event, Energy Crossroads, a Stanford student group devoted to clean energy solutions, will host a panel entitled "Educating the Energy Generation" in Cubberley Auditorium at 5:30 p. m. Secretary Chu will not be present.

For questions about the event, email gaia@assu.stanford.edu.

Christine Blackman is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.

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