Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He shares the honor with Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne and Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University. The Nobel committee recognized their work for developing “molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow. These constructions, metal-organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyze chemical reactions.”
Yaghi is the 28th faculty member from UC Berkeley to receive a Nobel Prize and the fifth in the last five years. In 2025, John Clarke also shared the Nobel Prize in physics with two UC Santa Barbara faculty members, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis. In previous years, David Card, Jennifer Doudna, and Reinhard Genzel, among others, have been Nobel laureates from UC Berkeley and other University of California campuses.
Yaghi holds the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair in the College of Chemistry and serves as co-director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at UC Berkeley. In the 1990s, he and his team created metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are hybrid compounds with a highly porous crystal structure. These structures are notable for their stability and tunability, allowing them to absorb, store, and release various gases and vapors, including carbon dioxide and methane.
Over 100,000 distinct MOF structures have been synthesized, each tailored for specific uses such as capturing carbon dioxide from industrial emissions, storing methane for fuel, and storing hydrogen for potential use in hydrogen-powered vehicles. In recent years, Yaghi developed MOFs that can absorb water from air, even in low-humidity environments, and has commercialized devices that harvest water from the atmosphere.
Yaghi also pioneered covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), expanding the possibilities for gas storage, separation, and clean water production. COFs, with their ability to store charged ions, are being explored for use as supercapacitors in batteries and automotive applications.
Describing his field as “reticular chemistry,” Yaghi defines it as “stitching molecular building blocks into crystalline, extended structures by strong bonds.” He credits his early training with chemist Walter Klemperer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for shaping his scientific approach.
Yaghi’s initial efforts to create these materials faced skepticism, but he persisted, supported by colleagues and moving through faculty positions at Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and finally UC Berkeley in 2012. The field of MOFs has grown significantly, with increasing numbers of scientific publications and commercial interest in applications ranging from chemical storage to catalysis.
In 2022, Yaghi became scientific director of the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet at UC Berkeley, which aims to use artificial intelligence to develop new versions of MOFs and COFs to address climate change.
He is also the founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, which promotes research opportunities worldwide and supports centers of research excellence in several countries.
Born in Amman, Jordan, to Palestinian refugee parents, Yaghi moved to the United States as a teenager to pursue education, eventually earning a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and completing postdoctoral work at Harvard University. His career has included faculty appointments at multiple universities and leadership roles at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Yaghi’s achievements have been recognized by numerous awards, including election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Von Hippel Award, and honors from scientific societies around the world.
He is an American citizen and resides in Berkeley, California.
