{"slug": "nobel-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-chinas-tsinghua-university-us", "title": "Nobel-winning materials scientist Omar Yaghi joins China’s Tsinghua University from the US", "summary": "Nobel-winning materials scientist Omar Yaghi has left the United States to join China's Tsinghua University, where he will lead an AI-driven research center focused on developing materials to address global challenges such as carbon neutrality and water shortages.", "body_md": "# Nobel-winning materials scientist Omar Yaghi joins China’s Tsinghua University from the US\n\nYaghi hopes to lead team using AI to create materials to tackle global challenges such as carbon neutrality and water shortages\n\n[Ling Xin](/author/ling-xin)in Ohio\n\nOmar Yaghi, the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry, has left the United States to lead a new AI-driven research centre at China’s Tsinghua University.\n\nThe 61-year-old materials scientist will head a team working on ways artificial intelligence (AI) can transform the design and synthesis of new materials and shorten their development cycle “by orders of magnitude”, Tsinghua said on Friday.\n\nSpeaking at his appointment ceremony, Yaghi said he hoped to develop materials to tackle major environmental challenges such as water shortages, carbon neutrality and sustainable development.\n\nHe added that he also wanted to help train young scientists in AI-driven chemistry.\n\n[shared the 2025 Nobel Prize with Richard Robson and Susumu Kitagawa](https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3328245/nobel-chemistry-prize-awarded-trio-breakthrough-metal-organic-frameworks?module=inline&pgtype=article)for their work on metal-organic frameworks, which are ultra-porous, spongelike materials created by linking metal ions with carbon-based molecules.\n\nThese and other related materials have the highest surface areas known to date, allowing them to capture and convert carbon, harvest water from desert air and absorb hydrogen to produce clean energy.\n\nZhou Zihui, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, said Yaghi had trained about 200 researchers, nearly half of whom were Chinese.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nobel-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-chinas-tsinghua-university-us", "canonical_source": "https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3359430/nobel-prize-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-tsinghua-university-us?utm_source=rss_feed", "published_at": "2026-07-04 13:00:09+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-04 13:29:31.822835+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Omar Yaghi", "Tsinghua University", "UC Berkeley", "Richard Robson", "Susumu Kitagawa", "Zhou Zihui"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nobel-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-chinas-tsinghua-university-us", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nobel-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-chinas-tsinghua-university-us.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nobel-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-chinas-tsinghua-university-us.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nobel-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-chinas-tsinghua-university-us.jsonld"}}