Meet Our Founder

Prof. Omar Yaghi

The founder of reticular chemistry and one of the most cited chemists in the world. Since 2012, Prof. Omar Yaghi has been the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. He is the Founding Director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, as well as the Co-Director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute and the California Research Alliance by BASF. Additionally, from 2009 to 2016, he was the head of the Center for Reticular Materials at NIMs, Tsukuba, Japan.

Prof. Omar Yaghi received more than 55 prestigious global awards and medals throughout his celebrated career, including the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2017; the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2018; the Gregory Aminoff Prize in 2019; and the VinFuture Prize in 2022.

Among his inventions, Prof. Omar Yaghi is famously known for his invention of MOF and COF as well as molecular weaving technologies.

Prof. Omar Yaghi’s work encompasses the synthesis, structure and properties of inorganic and organic compounds and the design and construction of new crystalline materials. Among his inventions, Professor Yaghi is famously known for his invention of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOF) and Covalent Organic Frameworks (COF) as well as molecular weaving technologies, which helps in achieving cleaner air, cleaner energy, and cleaner water.

He demonstrated the ability to design and develop novel materials, with atomic precision, that can be used for the capture, storage, separation, and controlled chemistry of a wide range of gases and molecules. The building block approach he developed has led to exponential growth in the creation of new materials having a diversity and multiplicity previously unknown in chemistry. He termed this field ‘Reticular Chemistry’ and defines it as ‘stitching molecular building blocks into extended structures by strong bonds’. The technology has a wide range of potential applications in support of the transition towards zero net carbon, purification, catalysis, and sensing.

Professor Yaghi has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles on Metal Organic Frameworks and Covalent Organic Frameworks, which have received a total of more than 205,000 citations. He has an h-index of 175 and is ranked as the second most impactful chemist worldwide (Top 100 Chemists, Thomson Reuters, 2011).