STANFORD, CA  (TIP): Dr Arun Majumdar, Indian-American material scientist, engineer and professor, has been named the inaugural dean of Stanford University’s new school that focuses on climate change and sustainability.

Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, the university’s first new school in 70 years, which aims to accelerate solutions to the global climate crisis, will be launched on September 1, according to Stanford news.

Majumdar, currently the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor, a faculty member of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, and Senior Fellow and former director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, will assume his new position on June 15. Originally from Kolkata, Majumdar received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 1985 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989. He was nominated to the position of Under Secretary of Energy in the United States between November 30, 2011 and May 15, 2012 but then the nomination was retracted.

After leaving Washington DC, Majumdar was the vice president for energy at Google, where he assembled a team to create technologies and businesses at the intersection of data, computing, and electricity grid.

Majumdar joined Stanford in 2014. He was the founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), and currently serves as the chair of the advisory board to the US Secretary of Energy. “I am deeply honored and humbled by the opportunity to serve as the inaugural dean,” Majumdar said in the release.