Nobel Laureate Omar Yaghi Leaves US for China to Lead AI Institute

Omar Yaghi, one of the world's most cited chemists and winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has formally closed the chapter on his career in the United States. Since July 2026 he has worked full time at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he leads a newly created institute combining artificial intelligence with materials research.

Yaghi was previously affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, and before that with UCLA. It was there, together with his team, that he developed materials known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), structures with enormous internal surface area capable of storing gases, capturing carbon dioxide, or pulling drinking water straight out of the air. For these discoveries he received the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sharing it with Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne and Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University.

A new institute at Tsinghua

At Tsinghua, Yaghi took charge of the AI Chemistry and Materials Research Institute, a unit tasked with using artificial intelligence to speed up the design and discovery of new materials. According to the university's announcement, research conducted at the institute is meant to serve both China and global science, not just domestic economic needs.

Yaghi describes artificial intelligence as a new, universal language of chemistry, a tool that lets the field connect with physics, biology, and materials engineering in ways that were previously impossible to scale. Instead of months of trial and error in the lab, AI models are meant to allow researchers to predict a material's structure and properties before it is even synthesized.

AI should serve all of humanity and cannot be a "solo act" of individual countries - Omar Yaghi

Criticism of American science

Yaghi's decision to relocate came at a time when the United States is in the midst of a debate over cuts to science funding and the departure of leading researchers to China and Europe. In an interview with Scientific American, he described the current state of American science as "not very encouraging," precisely because of the reduction in research grants.

Yaghi also voiced concern that American scientists are not engaging enough with what he calls the "AI revolution." In his view, using AI models in day-to-day research work has stopped being optional and has become a condition for the survival of the advanced research system in the US.

Scientists need to engage with AI models as a matter of survival for the advanced research system in the US - Omar Yaghi

Why it matters

Yaghi's case fits into a broader trend of leading scientists and AI researchers moving between the United States and China, also observed in recent months in computer science and physics. Unlike many earlier cases, though, this one does not involve an engineer working on large language models but a Nobel laureate in materials chemistry, showing that the competition for AI talent extends far beyond the labs of the model builders themselves.

For Beijing, recruiting a researcher of Yaghi's stature bolsters its ambition to turn China into a hub for AI-supported materials research, in line with the direction set out at this year's World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. For American universities, it is another warning sign in the debate over the effects of science budget cuts.

The MOF materials Yaghi works on have practical applications well beyond the laboratory, from extracting drinking water from air in arid regions, to capturing carbon dioxide, to storing hydrogen as a clean energy carrier. Combining this research with AI tools could meaningfully shorten the time needed to develop new versions of such materials, which also matters for companies and institutions outside China and the US, including European and Polish research centers working on energy storage.

Yaghi said that despite the change in affiliation, he intends to keep collaborating with research teams in the United States and Europe, describing the new institute as a platform open to scientists from around the world rather than solely a Chinese national project.