(Image credit – Bret Hartman / TED) President Biden announced on April 22 that he is nominating Asmeret Berhe to be director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. With a $7 billion annual budget, the office is the federal government’s largest funder of fundamental research in the physical sciences. Berhe is a biogeochemist at the University of California, Merced, who researches interactions between organic matter in the soil and environmental shifts such as climate change. This focus aligns with the Biden administration’s climate agenda as well as activities supported through the Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research program.