Granholm not to be energy secretary

AP reports that President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu to be his secretary of energy, a position that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was apparently under consideration for. Chu’s background:

Chu was one of three scientists who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997 for work in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. He’s a professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004, where he has pushed for research into alternative energy as a way to combat global warming. It is the oldest of the Energy Department’s national laboratories, doing only unclassified work, and in recent years under Chu has been at the center of research into biofuels and solar technologies.

The articles notes that Gov. Granholm was in Washington and met with the Obama transition team yesterday, which helped fuel speculation that she would be named energy secretary. As the Messenger’s Eartha Jane Melzer reported yesterday, Granholm was considered one of the favorites for the position.