Moh El-Naggar, a member of the NAI Life Underground team at the University of Southern California has been appointed the first Robert D. Beyer Early Career Chair in Natural Sciences at USC. The appointment, designed specifically for early career scholars, enables the chair holders “to be risk takers because they now have an underpinning of support that gives them the freedom to do the extra work we really expect of great faculty,” says USC Provost Michael Quick.

El-Naggar heads the NanoBio Lab and is known as a pioneer in the area of energy conversion and charge transmission at the interface between living cells and synthetic surfaces, with work that may lead to the linking of cellular biology and chemistry to nanotechnology. His previous awards include the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the Young Investigators Program Award.