Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is a Greek-American chemist and academic administrator who has served as the 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021.

[4][5] On September 1, 2021, Alivisatos became the 14th president of the University of Chicago, where he also holds a faculty appointment as the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, and the College; and serves as the Chair of the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory and Chair of the Board of Directors of Fermi Forward Discovery Group LLC, the operator of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

He was named the seventh Director of Berkeley Lab on November 19, 2009, by the University of California Board of Regents on the recommendation of UC President Mark Yudof and with the concurrence of the U.S. Department of Energy.

[15] He played a critical role in the establishment of the Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy's Nanoscale Science Research Center; and was the facility's founding director.

This achievement altered the nanoscience landscape and paved the way for a slew of new potential applications, including biomedical diagnostics, revolutionary photovoltaic cells, and LED materials.

However, in a landmark paper that appeared in the March 2, 2000 issue of the journal Nature,[23] Alivisatos reported on techniques used to select the size but vary the shapes of the nanocrystals produced.

The rod-shaped nanocrystal research, coupled with earlier work led by Alivisatos in which it was shown that quantum dots or "qdots"–nanometer-sized crystal dots (spheres a few billionths of a meter in size)– made from semiconductors such as cadmium selenide can emit multiple colors of light depending upon the size of the crystal, opened the door to using nanocrystals as fluorescent probes for the study of biological materials, biomedical research tools and aids to diagnosis,[24] and as light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

[17] Alivisatos is the founding scientist of Quantum Dot Corporation,[25] a company that makes crystalline nanoscale tags that are used in the study of cell behavior.

[30] Alivisatos also serves as a John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, and the College.

Under Alivisatos’ leadership, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab shifted its priorities to the more interdisciplinary areas of renewable energy and climate-change research.

While some of the groundwork for this integration was laid by former Director Steve Chu, Alivisatos led efforts to leverage the wide range of scientific capabilities at Berkeley Lab with a variety of industry partners and entrepreneurs.

These public/private sector collaborations resulted in technology transfer for industries as diverse as automobiles and medicine, and contributed to an increased speed of development in manufacturing and renewable energy.

[33] Alivisatos has also been outspoken on the issue of basic science funding at the federal level and America's ability to stay competitive in the areas global scientific research and development.