Secretary of Labor Elaine Lan Chao will go out with the Bush administration next month - but there is likely to be another ethnic Chinese in the US Cabinet.

US president-elect Barack Obama is widely expected to name Physics Nobel winner Steven Chu his energy secretary. If nominated, he would become the second Chinese American in a US administration.

Chu is now the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a government research institute in California. During his tenure, the lab has focused research on alternative energy, energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.