WARRENDALE, PA—The Materials Research Society (MRS) is pleased to announce that Omar M. Yaghi, University Professor and James and Neeltje Tretter Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Berkely, has been selected to receive the 2025 Von Hippel Award, the Society's highest honor. Yaghi is being honored for pioneering the design and synthesis of metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks, enabling advances in gas storage, carbon capture, and water harvesting from air.
Yaghi will accept the honor during the 2025 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit in Boston, Massachusetts, and present his lecture, Reticular Materials for Carbon Capture and Water Harvesting from Air, on Wednesday, December 3 at 6:15 pm (ET).
Conferred annually, the Von Hippel Award recognizes the qualities most prized by materials scientists and engineers—brilliance and originality of intellect, combined with vision that transcends the boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines, as exemplified by the life and work of Arthur von Hippel.
Yaghi received his PhD degree in Chemistry from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. 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 pioneering several extensive classes of new materials: Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs), and Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks (ZIFs). His work advances clean energy, water harvesting from desert air, and carbon capture.
He is the founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, and also co-directs Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute, California Research Alliance by BASF, and Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet. He is a member of the U.S. and German National Academies of Sciences and has received major global honors, including the Wolf Prize, King Faisal Prize, BBVA Award, Tang Prize, Solvay Prize, and Balzan Prize.
About the Materials Research Society
MRS is an organization of 15,000 materials researchers from academia, industry and government worldwide, and a recognized leader in promoting the advancement of interdisciplinary materials research and technology to improve the quality of life. MRS members are students and professionals hailing from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and engineering—the full spectrum of materials research. Headquartered in Warrendale, Pennsylvania (USA), MRS membership now spans 90 countries, with 56 percent of members residing outside the United States.
MRS serves and engages members across generations to advance their careers and promote materials research and innovation. The Society produces high-quality meetings and publications, assuring that members of all career stages can present and publish their most important and timely work to an international and interdisciplinary audience. MRS continues to expand its professional development portfolio, as well as promote diversity and inclusion in the scientific workforce, with career services for researchers worldwide. The Society advocates for the importance of scientific research and innovation to policymakers and the community. And the MRS Awards program honors those whose work has already had a major impact in the field, as well as those whose work shows great promise for future leadership.
For more information about the Materials Research Society visit mrs.org and follow @Materials_MRS.