Chemistry laureate Omar Yaghi visited Stockholm University

Omar Yaghi is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2025, together with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson, for the development of metal-organic frameworks, MOFs.

“It’s been a fantastic week, it was well done, well executed. Everything was just ultra perfect,” said Omar Yaghi about the week in Stockholm including the Nobel banquet and the Nobel Prize award ceremony.

“It’s a great honor. The highest honor a scientist can achieve.”

As one of the most influential chemists in the world, he has inspired many chemists. During his visit to the Department of Chemistry at Stockholm University, he highlighted that young researchers often are the pillars within the field of research and how important it is to give young researchers support and space.

“A single scientist cannot build an entire field of research, but together we can contribute,” Omar Yaghi told the students and young researchers in the audience.

He also advised the young researchers to do research because it is fun.

“If you don’t love it, don’t be in it. That is what makes science special and that is what makes successful science. We don’t work for a prize, we work because we are excited about it.”

Sustainable chemistry is the future

The commitment to climate and the environment is central to Omar Yaghi's work. Talking to the young researchers, he argues that sustainable chemistry is the subject’s future. In 2022, Omar Yaghi founded The Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet, together with colleagues at Berkeley. At the institute, chemistry and machine learning are brought together, finding ways to tackle climate change.

“What is needed now is the will of society – scientific solutions already exist,” says Omar Yaghi.

He also emphasises that AI is the future and that chemists need to understand machine learning models and invite computer scientists to participate in interdisciplinary collaborations. AI can help identify building blocks for new materials and predict results, for example to create materials that can be used to mitigate climate change. And it is young researchers who will propel AI in research forward, believes Omar Yaghi.

Passion for chemistry

Omar Yaghi says he is living his dream. He loves chemistry and his life as a chemist.

I love chemistry. I love the beauty of chemistry and I love the people in chemistry.

Chemists are the only researchers who can create things from the ground up, says Omar Yaghi. They control materials at a fundamental level, using atoms and molecules. He emphasises the importance of basic research and says that there is still a lot of basic research to be done in his field of research. He predicts that many new blockbuster applications will emerge.

“I find it incredibly rewarding to go into the lab and think: I wonder if I today can make a discovery that will propel me in a direction where I never thought I could go.”

Read about research on MOFs at Stockholm University

Read about Nobel laureate Fred Ramsdell´s lecture at Stockholm University

Read more about Stockholm University and the Nobel Prizes