Mostafa El-Sayed

Mostafa El-Sayed
Mostafa El-Sayed in March, 2016
Born	8 May 1933 (1933-05-08) (age 83) Egypt
Nationality	Egyptian-American
Fields	Chemical physicist
Alma mater	Ain Shams University Florida State University
Doctoral advisor	Michael Kasha

Mostafa A. El-Sayed (Arabic: مصطفى السيد) (born 8 May 1933) is an Egyptian-American chemical physicist, a leading nanoscience researcher, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a US National Medal of Science laureate. He is also known for the spectroscopy rule named after him, the El-Sayed rule.

He earned his B.Sc. from Ain Shams University Faculty of Science, Cairo in 1953. El-Sayed earned his doctoral degree from Florida State University working with Michael Kasha, the last student of the legendary G. N. Lewis . He spent time as a researcher at Harvard University, Yale University and the California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles in 1961. He is currently the Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He heads the Laser Dynamics Lab there.

El-Sayed is a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry (1980-2004).

El-Sayed and his research group has contributed to many important areas of physical and materials chemistry research. El-Sayed's research interests include the use of steady-state and ultra fast laser spectroscopy to understand relaxation, transport and conversion of energy in molecules, in solids, in photosynthetic systems, semiconductor quantum dots and metal nanostructures. The El-Sayed group has also been involved in the development of new techniques such as magnetophoto selection, picosecond Raman spectroscopy and phosphorescence microwave double resonance spectroscopy. A major focus of his lab is currently on the optical and chemical properties of noble metal nanoparticles and their applications in nanocatalysis, nanophotonics and nanomedicine. His lab is known for the development of the gold nanorod technology. Professor El-Sayed has over 500 publications in refereed journals in the areas of spectroscopy, molecular dynamics and nanoscience. Prof. El-Sayed has supervised the research of over 70 PhD students, 35 postdoctoral fellows and 20 visiting professors, several of whom hold key positions in the scientific community.