Omar Yaqi

Omar Mwannes Yaghi (English: عمر مونّس ياغي; born February 9, 1965) is a Jordanian-American chemist known for pioneering reticular chemistry and developing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). For the results of this work, he jointly won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson. Yagi is currently the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, and a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In January 2025, he became the seventh president of the World Cultural Council, an international organization that promotes cultural and scientific progress. Professor Yaghi created reticular chemistry, a new branch of chemistry in which molecules are held together by strong bonds to form open framework structures. He is also the pioneer and founder of Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) and Covalent Organic Framework (COF). Professor Yaghi also pioneered chemical molecular weaving technology and synthesized the world's first material that was woven at the atomic and molecular levels. Professor Yaghi has been named one of the "Top Ten Scientists in the United States" and is the only recipient of the American Materials Society Medal. In 2010, the H-index ranked second among scientists in the world. In 2018, Professor Yaghi won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the highest honor in the Hall of Chemistry.