The Obama administration now has two Nobel laureates in physics - Carl Wieman, whose name you might recognize from his Science 2.0 posts on fixing science education,  has accepted the job as associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Wieman, who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics with Wolfgang Ketterle and Eric Cornell, will report to OSTP director John Holdren, a fellow physicist, and head up the science section, with a staff of eight policy analysts.  

The other Nobel laureate in physics in the Obama administration is energy secretary Steven Chu.

My favorite Carl Wieman anecdote is spying him two years back at an AAAS meeting reading the student posters in physics.    I assume most of the students there did not know who he was or they would have gotten a big kick out of him reading their papers, looking for the next great mind.

Obviously he is a terrific choice, as his articles here attest.  He lives and breathes science education.  Congratulations, professor!