Omar Yaghi, The James and Neeltje Tretter Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded the 2020 August Wilhelm von Hofmann award. The German Chemical Society presents this prestigious award to an outstanding international chemist in a wide range of fields. Among the oldest chemistry awards, the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze gold medal was first given in 1903. The award is intended to recognize outstanding achievements in chemistry; in particular by scientists working outside of Germany.
Professor Yaghi has been recognized for his contributions to Reticular Chemistry, which includes metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and molecular weaving. He will be honored at an award ceremony at the 8th EuChemS Chemistry Congress (ECC8), to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, from August 30 to September 3, 2020. He will present a plenary lecture at the event.
About Professor Yaghi
Omar Yaghi is the Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. He is the Founding Director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, the Co-Director of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute, and the California Research Alliance by BASF.
His 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 inventing several extensive classes of new materials termed 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 in clean energy storage and generation. Specifically, applications of his materials are found in the storage and separation of hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide, and in clean water production and delivery, supercapacitor devices, proton and electron conductive systems, and harvesting water from desert air.