India, Nov. 10 -- Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist, is the Edward Teller senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where his work centres on energy, climate science and science policy. He moved to Stanford in 2024 after about 12 years at New York University, where he became founding director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress in 2012. His career has spanned academia, industry and government. Koonin joined the Caltech faculty in 1975 and was its provost from 1995 to 2004, before spending five years as chief scientist at British Petroleum. From 2009 to 2011, he was undersecretary for science in the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences, Koonin is ...