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 creating “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 now the 28th UC Berkeley faculty member to receive a Nobel Prize and the fifth recipient from the university in the last five years. He 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, Yaghi developed metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), combining metals with organic molecules to form porous crystals capable of absorbing, storing, and releasing gases and vapors. These MOFs are stable and can be tuned to capture specific molecules by varying their components. More than 100,000 distinct MOF structures have been created so far for applications such as carbon dioxide capture from industrial emissions and storage of methane or hydrogen for fuel.
Yaghi’s recent work includes developing MOFs that can absorb water directly from air even in low-humidity environments. His research led to devices that harvest water from desert air, producing up to five liters per day. In 2020, he founded Atoco to use MOFs for climate change mitigation and improving access to drinking water.
He also pioneered covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), materials useful for gas storage, separation, clean water production, and energy storage solutions like supercapacitors.
Yaghi describes his field as “reticular chemistry,” defined as “stitching molecular building blocks into crystalline, extended structures by strong bonds.” Reflecting on his early scientific career, he said he was determined to create materials using a rational building block approach: “There was no rationality in how you made these materials. There was no design, no intellectual rules or guidance for making them,” Yaghi said. “So I was fixated, as an assistant professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, on building materials using a building block approach so that I could rationally put these things together.”
Yaghi’s innovations enabled scientists to create robust, customizable materials by linking inorganic clusters with organic ligands. “That basically was the spark that ignited the field,” he said. “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 explained one key advantage: “The metal clusters are at the corners of a scaffolding, like they put around a building,” Yaghi said. “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.”
Yaghi’s approach combined principles from both organic and inorganic chemistry to create highly adaptable materials suitable for various industrial uses.
His early reports on MOFs met skepticism but found support among some colleagues. As he moved through academic positions at Arizona State University, University of Michigan, UCLA, and finally UC Berkeley in 2012, his work gained recognition worldwide.
Today, research into MOFs continues to expand rapidly. Numerous companies are exploring their potential for safer chemical storage and advanced catalysts. Yaghi is among the world’s most cited chemists.
In 2022, he became scientific director of UC Berkeley’s Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet, which aims to use artificial intelligence to develop cost-effective MOFs and COFs to address climate change challenges.
Yaghi is also founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute. This organization works globally to provide research opportunities by establishing centers of excellence in countries including Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Argentina, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Born in Amman, Jordan in 1965 to Palestinian refugee parents, Yaghi moved alone to Troy, New York at age 15 to pursue education in chemistry. He attended Hudson Valley Community College before transferring to SUNY Albany where he earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude in chemistry in 1985. After completing his Ph.D. at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990 and postdoctoral studies at Harvard University, he held faculty positions at several universities before joining UC Berkeley.
Throughout his career Yaghi has received many honors including election to the National Academy of Sciences (2019) and awards such as the Von Hippel Award (2025), Tang Prize in Sustainable Development (2024), VinFuture Prize (2021), Royal Society of Chemistry Sustainable Water Award (2020), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2018), King Faisal International Prize (2015), among others.
He is also a member or honorary fellow of several national academies including those in Germany, India, Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait as well as American scientific societies.
Yaghi is an American citizen residing in Berkeley.
