Nobel Prize winner leaving UC Berkeley for new role in China
Nobel Prize winner Omar Yaghi is leaving his position at UC Berkeley to lead the development of a new artificial intelligence institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the Chinese university announced.
In 2022, Yaghi will head the Artificial Intelligence Chemistry and Materials Research Institute in Tsinghua, where he was appointed professor emeritus. The new center, known as AIMATRY (AI × Material × Chemistry), will focus on materials design and synthesis through artificial intelligence. expression from university.
In 2025, Yaghi shared: Nobel Prize in Chemistry Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University and Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne for their development. metal-organic frameworksa type of superporous material in which metal ions and carbon-based molecules combine to form crystals with exceptionally large surface areas.
The material has the potential to combat climate change by capturing and storing carbon or other pollutants and drawing water from the atmosphere in areas where water is scarce. A member of the Nobel committee after the award I compared technologyThe ability to store enormous amounts of items in seemingly compact spaces, right down to Hermione Granger’s magical bag in the Harry Potter series.
Yaghi’s Irvine-based companyAtoco, there is in question It will start taking orders for its technology later this year. collects water from the air.
A representative for Yaghi said he could not yet respond to questions.
China is one of the few countries actively recruiting Scientists from the USA, where the Trump administration is located cut science funding, research grants have been suspended, fired science advisors and immigration restrictions were tightened.
“For many years our funding was very competitive; if you work hard and do good research, you get funding,” Yaghi said of the US. report With Scientific American earlier this year. “The current situation is not encouraging, as grants and support for science have been cut from the institutions on which many university researchers rely.”
Yaghi was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugees and immigrated to the United States to study when he was 15.
“We have learned over and over again in human civilization that scientists can go beyond boundaries,” Yaghi said. said The New York Times last year. “This is how knowledge spread and how large areas of the world lifted themselves out of poverty.”
