Steve Koonin, the former provost of Caltech and current chief scientist of BP, has been tapped by President Obama to serve as undersecretary of science at the Department of Energy. He would replace Ray Orbach in a position that oversees the department’s science portfolio, including running the national laboratory system. The position requires Senate confirmation.

The appointment had been rumoured in Washington for some time and comes as little surprise; Koonin is a longtime colleague of Steve Chu, the new secretary of energy. Both Koonin and Chu played major roles in setting up a $500-million industry-university alliance between BP, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Illinois. That agreement, inked in 2007, brought some unease over the industry partnership with the traditionally left-leaning academic enclave of Berkeley (see Nature story here). So far, though, the Energy Biosciences Institute has shown little evidence of nefarious industry tampering in its work on next-generation biofuels.

The Obama announcement also included the line: “President Obama also announced that ”https://www.cfo.doe.gov/sisakowitzbio.htm">Steve Isakowitz, the Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Energy, will continue serving in his current role." No doubt this was to squash down persistent rumours that Isakowitz, a former top budget officer at NASA, might get tapped for the post of NASA administrator — one Obama has yet to fill.

It’s a plenty busy time to be at DOE in any job; Isakowitz is scrambling to help figure out how to spend the nearly $40 billion allocated in stimulus funding for the agency.