Omar M. Yaghi

Omar Mwannes Yaghi is a chemist, born in Amman in 1965 to a Palestinian refugee family, who is best known for developing metal-organic frameworks and pioneering reticular chemistry. From 2012 to 2026 he was a University Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an affiliate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he founded the Berkeley Global Science Institute. In July 2026 he left Berkeley for a chair at Tsinghua University in China to lead a new artificial intelligence and materials research institute. He was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Richard Robson and Susumu Kitagawa, and was granted Saudi citizenship in 2021.