​Omar Yaghi pioneered a new field of chemistry (Reticular Chemistry). He has published over 280 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals that average 500 citations per paper. He was born in Amman, Jordan and received B.S. degree in chemistry from State University of New York-Albany (1985), and Ph.D. degree in chemistry from University of Illinois-Urbana (1990). He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1990-92). He has held professorial positions in chemistry at Arizona State University (1992-97), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (1998-2005), and UCLA (2006-11). Since 2012, he has been the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. He has received awards from fifteen countries for his development of reticular chemistry and its applications. Among these are: Materials Research Society Medal (2007), American Chemical Society Award in Chemistry of Materials (2009), King Faisal International Prize in Science (2015), Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2017), BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences (2018), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2018), Eni Award for Excellence in Energy (2018), United States National Academy of Sciences (2019), and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Aminoff Prize (2019).