Omar M. Yaghi

Omar M. Yaghi is the James and Neeltje Tretter Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. He is widely known for pioneering metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). These materials have the highest surface areas known to date, making them useful for hydrogen and methane storage, carbon capture and conversion, water harvesting from desert air, and catalysis, to mention a few. The chemistry approach he developed has led to an exponential growth in the creation of new materials. He termed this field 'Reticular Chemistry' and defines it as 'stitching molecular building blocks into extended structures by strong bonds'. One of the most highly cited chemists in the world, Yaghi has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles on MOFs and COFs, which have received a total of more than 205,000 citations. He has an h-index of 175 and ranked as the second most impactful chemist worldwide (Top 100 Chemists, Thomson Reuters, 2011).

Yaghi is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2019) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2022). He has also been honored with many awards, including the Sacconi Medal of the Italian Chemical Society (2004), Materials Research Society Medal (2007), American Chemical Society Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2009), Royal Society of Chemistry Centenary Prize (2010), King Faisal International Prize in Science (2015), Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2017), BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences (2017), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2018), Eni Award for Excellence in Energy (2018), Gregori Aminoff Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2019), August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze of the German Chemical Society (2020), Royal Society of Chemistry Sustainable Water Award (2020), Belgium’s International Solvay Chair in Chemistry (2021), and VinFuture Prize for Emerging Science and Technology (2021).