Omar Yaghi, who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has accepted a faculty position at Tsinghua University in Beijing to lead a new artificial intelligence research institute.
Yaghi arrived in the United States as a teenage refugee from Palestinian parents born in Amman, Jordan. He joined the University of California, Berkeley faculty in 2012 and gained recognition for developing metal-organic frameworks used in applications such as carbon capture and water harvesting from air.
Tsinghua University announced that Yaghi will head the new institute, which aims to use artificial intelligence to speed up the design and synthesis of advanced materials. Officials said the approach will replace traditional trial-and-error methods.
In a recent interview, Yaghi described the state of U.S. science as “not so encouraging” due to cuts in research grants. He added that researchers must adopt AI “as a matter of survival of the advanced research system in the U.S.”
During the appointment ceremony, Yaghi said he hopes the institute will develop materials to tackle water shortages, carbon neutrality, and sustainable development while training scientists at the intersection of chemistry and artificial intelligence.
