President-elect Obama will name former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services today at his 10 a.m. CT press conference in Chicago.

The new administration's energy and environmental team is also starting to take shape, with four names reported yesterday: Steven Chu, as Energy Secretary; Lisa Jackson, as EPA administrator; Carol Browner, as energy czar; and Nancy Sutley, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality. These four will likely be officially announced in the coming weeks.

From the AP:

• Chu was one of three scientists who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997. He's a professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004.

• Jackson, who would be the first black person to lead the EPA, is a former New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner who worked at the federal agency for 16 years. She co-chairs Obama's EPA transition team, and currently serves as chief of staff to New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

• Browner, who served as EPA chief for eight years in the Clinton administration, will become Obama's go-to person in the White House overseeing energy issues, an area expected to include the environment and climate matters. She now is chairwoman of the National Audubon Society.

• Sutley, the deputy mayor for energy and environment in Los Angeles and the mayor's representative on the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, is the first prominent gay person to earn a senior role in Obama's new administration. She was an EPA official during the Clinton administration.