Dr. Franklin (Lynn) Orr was sworn in as the Under Secretary for Science and Energy in December 2014. As the Under Secretary, Dr. Orr is the principal advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on clean energy technologies and science and energy research initiatives. In this role, he oversees DOE’s offices of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fossil Energy, Indian Energy Policy and Programs, Nuclear Energy, and Science. In total, these programs steward the majority of DOE’s National Laboratories (13 of 17).
Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Dr. Orr was the Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor Emeritus in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford in 1985. He served as the founding director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University from 2009 to 2013. He was the founding director of the Stanford Global Climate and Energy Project from 2002 to 2008, and served as Dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford from 1994 to 2002.
Dr. Orr holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. from Stanford University, both in Chemical Engineering.