Senator takes swipes at Biden nominee to lead Department of Energy’s science wing
Aug. 3, 2021 , 6:45 PM
President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science met some hostile questions at a Senate confirmation hearing today. Senator John Barrasso (WY), the senior Republican on the Senate energy committee, questioned whether Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, a soil scientist at the University of California, Merced, has the qualifications to lead the agency, which is the United States’s single biggest funder of the physical sciences and spends less than 11% of its $7 billion annual budget on biological and environmental research.