Born in Gaza City on August 20, 1971 to a refugee family from the displaced village of Beit Diras in the occupied Gaza district, Sufyan Abdel Rahman Othman Tayeh is married and has two sons and three daughters. He attended primary school at the UNRWA schools in Jabalia refugee camp, and secondary school at Falujah Secondary School for Boys in Gaza, from which he obtained a high school degree in the scientific branch in 1988, a bachelor's degree in physics from Qaryounis University in Libya in 1994, a master's degree in theoretical physics (electromagnetic theory) from the Islamic University in Gaza in 2000, and a doctorate in theoretical physics (optoelectronics) from Ain Shams University in Egypt in 2007. He worked as a teacher in the Physics Department at the Islamic University since 1994, and held several positions at the same university: Head of the Physics Department from 2008-2011, Deputy Dean of Admissions and Registration from 2011-2013, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs from 2013-2015, Dean of Admissions and Registration from 2015-2019, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs from 2019-2020, Professor in 2018, Visiting Professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada in 2021, and President of the Islamic University in Gaza since August 2023.
Tayeh holds a master's degree in theoretical physics and applied mathematics, and has won a number of scientific and appreciation awards, including: Abdul Hamid Shoman Award for Young Arab Researchers in 2012, the Best Research Award at the Islamic University in 2017, the Palestine Islamic Bank Scientific Research Award in 2019, and he was ranked among the top 2% of researchers around the world by Elsevier in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Stanford University (United States) in 2021.
He joined a research team from Indian universities since 2014, and has published 150 papers in scientific journals, and has contributed to two books on optoelectronics (2021), the first published by Taylor and Francis and the second by Elsevier.
He has served as an editor for a number of international scientific journals and reports, including: Al-Mukhtar Journal of Science (Libya), American Journal of Optics and Photonics (Scientific Publishing Group), SCIREA Journal of Physics (Scientific Research Society), and Advanced Physics Research Reports (American Publishing House).
He said: "I realized from the first moments I worked at the Islamic University that the mission of universities is not teaching, not graduating generations, but three main paths: Scientific research, community service, and teaching as a third and not primary task. The main task is scientific research."