Paul Alivisatos graduated, with honors, from the University of Chicago where he received a B.A. in Chemistry. After graduating from the University of Chicago, he received a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986.

Dr. Alivisatos then went to work with Dr. Louis Brus at AT & T Bell labs where he remained until 1988.

Following his tenure at AT&T Bell labs, Dr. Alivisatos joined the Berkeley faculty as an Assistant professor of Chemistry in 1988. He was named Associate professor of Chemistry in 1993, and became a full professor of chemistry in 1995. He was also given the prestigious honor of being named Chancellor’s Professor of Chemistry from 1998 to 2001. In 1999 he was named professor of Materials Science.

In addition to his faculty appointments, Professor Alivisatos is Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and Director of the Materials Sciences Division at LBNL.

In the private sector, Dr. Alivisatos is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society, as well as the scientific founder of the Quantum Dot Corporation.
Professor Alivisatos has gained recognition, worldwide, for his study of the synthesis and characterization of semiconductor nanocrystals.

His research seeks to understand the structural, thermodynamic, optical, and electrical properties of these inorganic crystals of nanometer size. He has received many awards for his contributions to the field of Nanotechnology, the most recent being election into the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts, and the 2005 ACS Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry.