Majumdar

Dr. Arun Majumdar is known as the country's "Green Czar," but in many ways that nickname understates his position.

The engineer from UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory last year was named the first director of the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, or ARPA-E, created to address the major challenges facing the country in energy, climate change and related technologies.

Majumdar will be giving a free talk in Seattle next week at the University of Washington, which is encouraging the public to attend. It will take place Thursday Feb. 18, at 3:30 p.m. in the Microsoft Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.

Among other subjects, he'll talk about how the agency is being put together, and where it's headed from here. Should be a very interesting event. More details available on this UW events page.

On a related note, the UW is also hosting a talk this Thursday afternoon by Harry Shum, the corporate vice president in charge of product development for Microsoft's Bing search engine. Details here.