Paul Alivisatos

Dr. Paul Alivisatos serves as the seventh director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, succeeding Steve Chu when he was sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of Energy.
 
Alivisatos has led a distinguished career in chemistry and nanoscience research.  He has made groundbreaking contributions to the fundamental physical chemistry of nanocrystals, including the synthesis of size and shape controlled nanoscystals, and studies of the optical, electrical, structural, and thermodynamic properties.   He has demonstrated key applications of nanocrystals in biological imaging and renewable energy.  He is currently the Larry and Diane Bock Professor of Nanotechnology and is a professor in the departments of materials science and chemistry at UC Berkeley.  (Larry and Diane Bock are the founders and main leaders of the U.S.A. Science & Engineering Festival, held on the Mall in Washington, DC.  The Kavli Foundation sponsors the Kavli Science Video Contest for this Festival.)
 
He is the recipient of the Linus Pauling Medal, Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, the Eni Italgas Prize for Energy and Environment, the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics, the Wilson Prize, the Coblentz Award for Advances in Molecular Spectroscopy, the American Chemical Society Award for Colloid and Surface Science, the Von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society and most recently Israel’s Wolf Prize in Chemistry which he shares with Charles Lieber.  
 
He received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1981 from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1986.