Paul Alivisatos

Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is an American chemist and academic administrator who has served as the 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021.

He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications.

Alivisatos returned to the United States to attend the University of Chicago in the late 1970s.

In 1981, Alivisatos earned a B.A. with honors in chemistry from the University of Chicago.

In 1986, he received a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked under Charles Harris.

His Ph.D. thesis concerned the photophysics of electronically excited molecules near metal and semiconductor surfaces.

He then joined AT&T Bell Labs working with Louis E. Brus, and began research in the field of nanotechnology.

Alivisatos returned to Berkeley in 1988 as an assistant professor of chemistry, becoming associate professor in 1993 and professor in 1995.

Alivisatos' affiliation with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (or Berkeley Lab) began in 1991 when he joined the staff of the Materials Sciences Division.

Further, he is a world expert on the chemistry of nanoscale crystals; one of his papers (Science, 271: 933–937, 1996) has been cited over 13,800 times.

He has used it to direct crystal growth and create new materials, as in Nature, 382: 609–11, 1996, and even to measure nanoscale distances (see Nature Nanotechnology, 1: 47–52, 2006).

He is widely recognized as being the first to demonstrate that semiconductor nanocrystals can be grown into complex two-dimensional shapes, as opposed to simple one-dimensional spheres.

Alivisatos proved that controlling the growth of nanocrystals is the key to controlling both their size and shape.

This achievement altered the nanoscience landscape and paved the way for a slew of new potential applications, including biomedical diagnostics, revolutionary photovoltaic cells, and LED materials.

Nanocrystals are aggregates of anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of atoms that combine into a crystalline form of matter known as a "cluster."

Typically a few nanometers in diameter, nanocrystals are larger than molecules but smaller than bulk solids and therefore often exhibit physical and chemical properties somewhere in between.

Given that a nanocrystal is virtually all surface and no interior, its properties can vary considerably as the crystal grows in size.

Prior to Alivisatos' research, all non-metal nanocrystals were dot-shaped, meaning they were essentially one-dimensional.

No techniques had been reported for making two-dimensional or rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals that would also be of uniform size.

He served as Chancellor's Professor from 1998 to 2001, and added an appointment as a professor of materials science and engineering in 1999.

He was ranked fifth among the world's top 100 chemists for the period 2000–2010 in the list released by Thomson Reuters.

On September 1, 2021, Alivisatos became the 14th president of the University of Chicago, where he also holds a faculty appointment as the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, and the College; and serves as the Chair of the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory and Chair of the Board of Directors of Fermi Research Alliance LLC, the operator of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

However, in a landmark paper that appeared in the March 2, 2000 issue of the journal Nature, Alivisatos reported on techniques used to select the size but vary the shapes of the nanocrystals produced.

This was hailed as a major breakthrough in nanocrystal fabrication because rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals can be stacked to create nano-sized electronic devices.

From 2005 to 2007 Alivisatos served as Berkeley Lab's Associate Laboratory Director for the Physical Sciences area.

In 2008, he served as Deputy Lab Director under Berkeley Lab Director Steven Chu, and then as interim director when Chu stepped down to become the Secretary of Energy.

He previously served as the Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2009–2016), and as Berkeley’s interim Vice Chancellor for Research (2016–2017).

He held a number of faculty appointments at Berkeley, including the Samsung Distinguished Professor in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Research and Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering.

Alivisatos was also the Founding Director of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute (ENSI), an institute on the Berkeley campus launched by the Kavli Foundation to explore the application of nanoscience to sustainable energy technologies.

Paul Alivisatos was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Greek family, where he lived until the age of 10, when his family moved to Athens, Greece.

Alivisatos has said of his years in Greece that it was a great experience for him because he had to learn the Greek language and culture then catch up with the more advanced students.

"When I found something very interesting it was sometimes a struggle for me to understand it the very best that I could," he has said of that experience.

"That need to work harder became an important motivator for me."

He was named the seventh Director of Berkeley Lab on November 19, 2009, by the University of California Board of Regents on the recommendation of UC President Mark Yudof and with the concurrence of the U.S. Department of Energy.

He played a critical role in the establishment of the Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy's Nanoscale Science Research Center; and was the facility's founding director.

Energy Secretary, Nobel laureate, and fellow Berkeley alumnus Steven Chu noted that Alivisatos is "an incredible scientist with incredible judgment on a variety of issues. He's level-headed and calm, and he has an ability to inspire people…[and he can] take projects from material science to real-world applications."

Alivisatos is an internationally recognized authority on nano chemistry in the synthesis of semiconductor quantum dots and multi-shaped artificial nanostructures.

He is also an expert on how these can be applied, for example as biological markers (e.g., Science, 281: 2013–16, 1998; a paper cited over 10,900 times ).

In addition, his use of DNA in this area (DNA nanotechnology) has shown the surprising versatility of this molecule.

Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Alivisatos was the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost (2017–2021) of the University of California, Berkeley, where he had taught since 1988.