This article reports that academic researchers are optimistic that President Barack Obama's approach to science heralds a new era of support for their work. When Mr. Obama named his top science and technology advisers only weeks after being elected, many scientists celebrated. After eight years of an administration that many academics believed shortchanged research budgets and politicized science, researchers saw the swift appointments as evidence of a shift in the federal treatment of science. Scientists say the signs are good so far. Mr. Obama named all his top scientific advisers within seven weeks of being elected, and he restored the science-adviser post to a cabinet-level position. President George W. Bush had denied his science adviser, John H. Marburger III, that status, effectively sidelining him in policy debates. Mr. Bush also took much longer than Mr. Obama to pull his science team together. It was six months before he named his nominee for director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and three more months before the Senate confirmed the nominee. By contrast, the Senate confirmed President Bill Clinton's pick for the post eight days after his inauguration. Academics are particularly pleased that Mr. Obama chose one of their own--Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California--to lead the Department of Energy. Often presidents choose politicians or business leaders to head up the agency.