The ability to control charge transfer dynamics to and from quantum dots (QDs) is essential to many QD-based devices, such as solar cells and light emitting diodes. Recent reports of multiple exciton generation (MEG) by one absorbed photon in some QDsoffer an exciting new approach to improve the efficiency of QD-based solar cells and to design novel multi-electron/hole photocatalysts. Two major challenges remain. First, the efficiency of MEG process needs to be significantly improved for practical applications. Second, the utilization of multi-excitons requires ultrafast exciton dissociation to compete with the exciton-exciton annihilation process, which occurs on the 10s to 100s ps time scale. In this presentation we report a series of studies of exciton dissociation dynamics in QDs and nanorods by electron transfer to adsorbed electron acceptors. We show that excitons in CdX (X=S, Se, Te) and PbS QDs can be dissociated on the picosecond and and faster timescales and multiple excitons (generated by multiple photons) per QD can be dissociated by electron transfer to adsorbed acceptors. We discuss approaches for optimizing the single and multiple exciton dissociation efficiencies by controlling the spatial distributions of the electron and hole (i.e. wave-function engineering) in type II core/shell QDs and nanorods.