Niyazi Serdar Sarıçiftçi graduated from the Austrian St. George's College in Istanbul. He also studied classical piano at the Music Conservatory in Istanbul (1970–1980).
Then he began studying physics at the University of Vienna (1980–1989). After obtaining the doctorate (1989), he conducted research on the 2nd Physical Institute of the University of Stuttgart, Germany (1989–1992). In 1992 he received the academic teaching license (venia docendi) by the Central Interuniversitary Commission (YÖK) in Ankara, Turkey. He then went to the Institute for Polymers & Organic Solids at the University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States, where he worked for four years and, together with Alan J. Heeger (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2000) discovered and investigated the polymeric organic solar cells has (1992–1996). In April 1996, he accepted the appointment as Chair of Physical Chemistry at the Johannes Kepler University Linz.
Since 1996 he gives lectures as a full professor at the JKU and is the head of the Institute for Physical Chemistry. In 2000 he was appointed founding director of the Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells (LIOS) at JKU. Between 2003 and 2009 he was elected to the City Council of the City of Linz (SPÖ Group). Furthermore, Sarıçiftçi is a founding member of the Linz Circle. He is also a member of various associations and societies: Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), American Chemical Society (ACS), Materials Research Society (MRS), Austrian Physical Society (ÖPG), Austrian Chemical Society (GÖCH) and Fellow of SPIE. 2014, he was elected a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS).