He has received numerous awards for his research on the molecular characteristics of water and aqueous solutions.

Saykally has been a professor at the University of California, Berkeley since 1979 after postgraduate research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology with Kenneth Melvin Evenson.

Recent work includes the spectroscopic determination of a universal water force field via the study of water clusters, the development of femtosecond nonlinear optical molecular imaging methods applied to single nanowire lasers and biological systems, femtosecond Deep UV SHG/SFG studies of liquid electrolyte interfaces, and soft X-ray spectroscopy of liquids and liquid surfaces.

A co-author of over 400 publications that have been cited over 50,000 times (H index > 100), the recipient of over 75 honors and awards from 15 different countries, Saykally is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2004 received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Hinshelwood Lectureship from Oxford University and the Inaugural International Solvay Chair in Chemistry from the Solvay Institutes of Belgium.

Over 150 students and postdocs have trained under his direction, many of whom hold prominent positions in academic, government, and industrial institutions.