UC Berkeley professor Omar Yaghi wins Nobel prize in chemistry

"This recognition is really a testament of the power of the public school system in the U.S. that takes people like me with a major disadvantaged background, a refugee background and allows you to work hard and distinguish yourself, Yaghi said. Especially UC Berkeley, where the faculty are given full freedom to explore, fail and succeed."

"Yaghi's discoveries with MOFs along with co-winners Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Japan have broad implications for emerging technologies such as water capture from desert winds, toxic gas containment and carbon sequestration from the atmosphere. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in its announcement, lauded the MOF breakthroughs for their ability to craft customizable materials with applications across the scientific field."

"Imagine a porous filter programmed to selectively remove any atom or molecule at the command of a scientist."

"Metalorganic frameworks have enormous potential, bringing previously unforeseen opportunities for custom-made materials with new functions, said Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry."

Omar Yaghi, a Jordanian immigrant shaped by American public schooling, shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering work on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Yaghi developed stable, tunable MOFs that can be modified to possess specific properties, effectively creating customizable porous materials capable of selectively capturing atoms or molecules. The MOFs have potential applications in water capture from desert winds, toxic gas containment, and atmospheric carbon sequestration. Co-winners Richard Robson and Susumu Kitagawa provided foundational discoveries that Yaghi expanded. Tens of thousands of MOFs have since been synthesized, and the technology is viewed as key to solving major global challenges.

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