Omar M. Yaghi has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson for their development of metal-organic frameworks. This has led to breakthroughs in clean energy, environmental remediation and sustainable water collection.
Yahgi was born in Jordan and moved to New York at 15 to pursue his education, earning his associate in science degree in Liberal Arts & Science-Mathematics & Science from Hudson Valley Community College in 1983 and his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from UAlbany in 1985. After graduating from UAlbany, Yaghi earned his PhD in chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1990 and completed a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard in 1992.
He has worked at Arizona State University (1992–98), the University of Michigan (1999–2006) and UCLA (2006–2011) before eventually settling at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is now the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry. At UC Berkeley he serves as Founding Director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute.
His metal organic frameworks are microscopic structures that can trap and store gases like carbon dioxide and water vapor, basically a molecular sponge. (more science-y stuff, maybe ask razi for help) MOFs, or Metal-Organic Frameworks, are structures where there is ample room between molecules or atoms that can be filled by other substances. Metallic atoms form the center of ‘coordination complexes’, each consisting of one metallic atom, and several organic ligands, molecules that are attached to the central metallic atom.
Many of these complexes form together to create a structure with a massive porosity. However, such structures are typically infamously unstable, and often are unable to be used in any practical, meaningful way. Yahgi, Furukawa, Cordova & O’Keeffe created a MOF which is remarkably stable. Most notably, they have created the largest pore aperture, and lowest density MOF type, which allows for larger molecule storage, and gas storage.
HVCC President Michael Brophy has congratulated Yahgi, saying “The college is honored to have been the place where he began his journey in higher education, and his impressive accomplishments serve as a testament to the enduring difference a community college education can make in the lives of our students.” University at Albany President Havidán Rodríguez also congratulated him, saying “That an interest in chemistry nurtured right here on the UAlbany campus could one day lead to this highest honor for scientific exploration and discovery should surprise no one familiar with the curiosity, drive, and talent of UAlbany students… You have made your 200,000 fellow UAlbany alumni enormously proud, Dr. Yaghi, and you have once again reminded the world that it is always a great day to be a Great Dane.”