2025 Nobel chemistry laureate Omar Yaghi has left UC Berkeley to join Tsinghua University full-time. Tsinghua has appointed him as a chair professor and tapped him to lead the new AI Materials Chemistry Research Center, AIMATRY.
The center will bring together teams from chemistry, chemical engineering, AI, computer science, and materials science to overhaul materials design and synthesis with AI. Its goal: bridge the entire chain from theoretical computation to production, and compress the R&D cycle for new materials by an order of magnitude.
Yaghi shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two other scientists for advancing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). These materials act like molecular sponges and can be used for carbon capture, extracting water from air, and hydrogen storage.
Yaghi had been an honorary professor at Tsinghua since 2022, but this move converts that long-term collaboration into a full-time appointment.
Nature framed the shift against the backdrop of shrinking US research funding and China's aggressive pursuit of top talent. Still, Yaghi has not publicly attributed his decision to American cuts in research support.