As an academic advisor, AlSayyad has worked with more than 50 PhD students in both architecture and planning in addition to supervising more than a hundred M.Arch, MCP and MUD theses during his 33-year career at Berkeley.
AlSayyad has also produced and co-directed two public television video documentaries: Virtual Cairo and At Home with Mother Earth.
Having spent a year in Norman, Oklahoma as a child, AlSayyad decided to return and make his life in the US.
He then went on to work for Yamasaki & Associates, architects of the World Trade Center, before accepting his first professorial position at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (UPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
[1] In 2016, an investigation into sexual harassment allegations by a PhD student in the architecture department at the University of California, Berkeley led to a partial suspension of AlSayyad's teaching duties.
[4] Rather than serve the suspension, AlSayyad elected to retire, but has also sued the university, claiming that Chancellor Carol T. Christ overstepped her authority in determining his punishment.