[1] Efros graduated as a physical engineer in 1973 from the Leningrad Technological Institute and received his doctorate there in 1978.
[1][2] In the 1980s, Alexey Ekimov, Alexei A. Onuschenko and Efros, discovered semiconductor nanocrystals while studying doped glasses.
They correctly determined the quantum mechanical origin of the size-dependent optical properties of nanocrystals.
[1] He was at the Technical University of Munich from 1990 to 1992, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as visiting scientist from 1992 to 1993.
[6] In 2013, he received the E. F. Gross Medal of the Russian Optical society for pioneering nanocrystal research.