FACTBOX: Bio of Obama energy secy pick Steven Chu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-Elect Barack Obama has chosen physicist Steven Chu to fill the position of Energy Secretary in his cabinet. Below are some facts about Chu's background:

*Chu's father, Ju Chin Chu, came to the United States from China in 1943 to study chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His mother, Ching Chen Li, join his father two years later studying economics.

*Chu was born in 1948 in St. Louis, Missouri, where his father was teaching at Washington University. His family later settled in Garden City, New York.

*Chu received his undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D from University of California at Berkeley.

*Chu, who has published more than 220 scientific papers, received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

*Chu has been director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since August 2004, and has pushed for the lab to become a leader in alternative and renewable energy research.

*Chu has strongly advocated using energy efficiency to combat climate change and developing new technologies to address energy problems.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Christian Wiessner)