"I do think that there will be a sea change in the Obama administration with the respect shown for the findings of science as well as the process of science," said David Baltimore, Nobel laureate and former president of the California Institute of Technology.

"The Bush administration has been the most remarkably anti-science administration that I've seen in my adult life."

During his White House campaign, Obama vowed that once he takes office on Tuesday, scientific thought and research while play a crucial role in his government.

He made good on this pledge by naming several top scientists to his cabinet, including Nobel laureate physicist Steven Chu as his energy secretary.

"His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science," Obama said as he named Chu at the head of a new team to take on global warming and break US reliance on foreign oil.

"We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action," he added, apparently referring to the battle against climate change, which outgoing President George W. Bush for many years refused to blame on human activity.

Obama also nominated John Holdren, a Havard University professor, as head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chairman of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Holdren led the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of prominent scientists that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

Underscoring the importance of genetic research, the president-elect also named Eric Lander and Harold Varmus as co-chairmen of the council of advisors alongside Holdren.

Lander is founding director of the Broad Institute, which played a leading role in the Human Genome Project which in 2003 succeeded in mapping the location of about 20,500 genes on the 23 pairs of human chromosomes.

Varmus, a co-recipient of a 1989 Nobel prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, has been serving as president and chief executive of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York since January 2000.

"It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology," Obama said as he unveiled the appointments.

The appointments have been well-received by the scientific community, which became gradually demoralized during the Bush years.

They "will go a very long way in assuring the scientific community that the administration is serious about using good science in the formulation of public policy," Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), told AFP.

He said Obama had already talked more about the role of science than any other previous president during their entire administration.

But he warned Obama will still have to wrestle with the age-old problem of funding.

"In the economic climate, it will be very difficult to find money to increase support for research in critical areas ... to find the money to do some of the very expensive research on alternative sources of energy," Leshner said.

Francesca Grifo, from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) agreed, saying: "Even if they have the best attention it's going to be challenging because there are so many competing interests in this huge economy."

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