2024 Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture and Award: Omar Yaghi

The 2024 Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture will be presented by Omar Yaghi, James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley.

Endowed in 1990 by chemist Glenn Edgar Ullyot, this annual lecture seeks to emphasize to the general public the positive role the chemical and molecular sciences play in our daily lives. It is organized jointly with the Department of Chemistry and the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania; the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of the Sciences; and the Philadelphia and Delaware sections of the American Chemical Society.

About Omar Yaghi

Yaghi’s work encompasses the synthesis, structure, and properties of inorganic and organic compounds and the design and construction of new crystalline materials. He is widely known for pioneering several extensive classes of new materials: Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs), and Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks (ZIFs). These materials have the highest surface areas known to date, making them useful for such purposes as hydrogen and methane storage, carbon capture and conversion, water harvesting from desert air, and catalysis. The building-block approach he developed has led to an 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.” His work on MOFs, COFs, and ZIFs led to over 300 published articles, which have received a total of more than 227,000 citations.

Yaghi is the founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, whose mission is to build centers of research in developing countries and provide opportunities for young scholars to discover and learn. He is also the codirector of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute (Kavli ENSI), focusing on the basic science of energy transformation on the molecular level; the California Research Alliance by BASF (CARA), supporting joint academia-industry innovations; as well as the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), which aims to develop cost-efficient, easily deployable versions of two classes of ultra porous materials—MOFs and COFs—to help limit and address the impacts of climate change.

Yaghi is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2019), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022), and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2022). He has also been honored with many awards, including the Sacconi Medal of the Italian Chemical Society (2004), Materials Research Society Medal (2007), American Chemical Society Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2009), Royal Society of Chemistry Centenary Prize (2010), King Faisal International Prize in Science (2015), Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2017), BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences (2017), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2018), Eni Award for Excellence in Energy (2018), Gregori Aminoff Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2019), August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze of the German Chemical Society (2020), Royal Society of Chemistry Sustainable Water Award (2020), Belgium’s International Solvay Chair in Chemistry (2021), VinFuture Prize for Emerging Science and Technology (2021), and the Wilhelm Exner Medal (2023).

Omar Yaghi received his PhD in chemistry from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University.

Header photo of Liberty Bowl by Rachael Balascak