Arun Majumdar, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, has been named co-director of the university’s Precourt Institute for Energy. He will serve with the current director, Sally M. Benson, professor of energy resources engineering.

“One of the goals when we started the Precourt Institute was to provide additional faculty positions for researchers of the highest caliber,” said university President John L. Hennessy. “We certainly accomplished that by recruiting Arun, so his willingness to take on this leadership role is exciting.”

In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Majumdar as the first director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s $400 million Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which finances energy technologies too early in development for private-sector investment. Before coming to Stanford, Majumdar was Google’s vice president for energy, where he created several energy technology initiatives, especially on the electricity grid, and advised the company on its broader energy strategy.

The Precourt Institute supports Stanford research and education to make the world’s energy systems less vulnerable to environmental, economic, and security threats, and more capable of delivering modern energy service to billions of people now living without it. It funds early-stage research to explore potentially transformative energy technologies and policies.