Berkley Center

Ernest Moniz is the United States secretary of energy and is tasked with implementing critical Department of Energy missions in support of the president’s goals of growing the economy, enhancing security, and protecting the environment. Prior to his appointment, Moniz was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), having joined MIT's faculty in 1973. Most recently, Moniz served as the founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative and as director of the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, where he was a leader of multidisciplinary technology and policy studies on the future of nuclear power, coal, and natural gas. From 1997 until January 2001, Moniz served as under secretary of the Department of Energy. He received a bachelor of science degree, summa cum laude, in Physics from Boston College and a doctorate in Theoretical Physics from Stanford University.