Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, has been named a co-recipient of 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 holds the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair in the College of Chemistry and is co-director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at UC Berkeley. He is now the 28th faculty member from UC Berkeley to receive a Nobel Prize, and the fifth in as many years.
His pioneering research in the 1990s led to the creation of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), highly porous crystalline materials that can absorb, store, and release gases and vapors. By combining metals with organic molecules, Yaghi and his colleagues developed stable and customizable compounds, which have since been synthesized in more than 100,000 distinct forms for applications such as carbon dioxide capture from industrial emissions and hydrogen storage for fuel.
Yaghi’s research has also led to practical innovations. In recent years, he developed MOFs that can extract water from air in arid environments and founded companies to commercialize these technologies and to use MOFs to address climate change and water scarcity.
He has also contributed to the development of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), expanding options for gas storage, separation, and clean water production.
Describing his field as “reticular chemistry,” Yaghi said it involves “stitching molecular building blocks into crystalline, extended structures by strong bonds.” Reflecting on his early career, he noted: “There was no rationality in how you made these materials. There was no design, no intellectual rules or guidance for making them,” adding that his approach allowed for rational construction using building blocks.
Yaghi explained further: “That basically was the spark that ignited the field. After that, anybody could take an inorganic cluster, link it with an organic ligand and make a porous crystal. You can functionalize the pores, do hydrogen storage, CO2 capture, you can now capture water. And on top of all of that, you have thousands of inorganic building blocks that could be used and millions of organic units that could be used, and the combination would produce an infinite, truly infinite variety of structures that can not only be imagined, but can actually be made in the lab.”
He emphasized the robust nature of MOFs: “The metal clusters are at the corners of a scaffolding, like they put around a building. At the intersection, people had put one metal ion. The new ones that we invented had clusters of metal ions that were large and allowed you to have flexibility on how they are linked. And above all else, they were not flimsy, they were not unsteady, like the ones made from single metal ions. The strong bonds between the metal clusters and charged organic linkers basically make the framework steady and robust.”
MOFs are highly customizable; their structure allows researchers to tailor them for specific uses by changing their components. The addition of enzymes to MOFs’ pores enables catalytic reactions for clean energy applications.
Yaghi’s early work was met with skepticism but gained acceptance as the field grew rapidly. He continued to advance MOF research during appointments at Arizona State University, University of Michigan, UCLA, and finally UC Berkeley.
He is among the world’s most cited chemists and has held leadership roles at research centers such as the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet at UC Berkeley. This institute aims to use artificial intelligence to develop new MOFs and COFs to help address climate change.
Yaghi also leads the Berkeley Global Science Institute, promoting research opportunities worldwide through centers in countries including Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Argentina, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Born in Amman, Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents, Yaghi moved to the United States as a teenager to pursue his education. He earned a B.S. in chemistry from SUNY Albany and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before holding academic positions across several universities.
His achievements have been recognized by numerous awards such as election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 and receipt of prizes including the Von Hippel Award (2025), Tang Prize in Sustainable Development (2024), VinFuture Prize (2021), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2018), and others. He is also a member or honorary fellow of several scientific academies worldwide.
Yaghi is an American citizen and resides in Berkeley, California.
