Dr. El-Sayed is 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, El-Sayed Rule.

In 1953, Dr. El-Sayed earned his B.Sc. degree from Ain Shams University, Faculty of Science; he pursued further studies and earned his doctoral degree from Florida State University, working with Michael Kasha, the last student of the legendary G. N. Lewis. Dr. El-Sayed worked at several leading universities, namely, Harvard University, Yale University and the California Institute of Technology. In 1961, he became a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently the Julius Brown Chair and Regents’ Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he heads the Laser Dynamics Lab there. In 2011, he was listed number 17 in the Thomson-Reuters listing of the Top Chemists of the Past Decade.