 The chairman of the UN's science panel will head the new Yale Climate and Energy Institute, the university said on Tuesday. Rajendra Pachauri, who has chaired the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2002, will work at the university center half-time. He will continue to head both the IPCC and The Energy and Resources Institute, which is based in India. In 2007, Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace prize on behalf of the IPCC, which shared the prize with former US Vice President Al Gore. The IPCC is beginning work on its fifth assessment of climate change, the first of which was issued in 1988. Nearly 100 Yale scientists, social scientists and policy experts joined to form the university's new climate center. It will provide seed grants and foster research on topics from atmospheric science to public policy, Yale said. Initial projects will focus on the economics of carbon storage and forecasting climate's impact on water supplies and diseases.