The departure of reticular chemistry pioneer Omar Yaghi from the US has made waves across the country. Earlier this month, he left the University of California, Berkeley for China, and what followed was an avalanche of news coverage. Major publications like The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Forbes reported his move, in a rare instance of an academic’s transfer becoming headline news. But Yaghi isn’t just any academic, he won the chemistry Nobel prize last year for co-developing metal–organic frameworks (MOFs).
Yaghi joined Tsinghua University in Beijing in early July, and he will lead the establishment of the new Artificial Intelligence Chemistry and Materials Research Institute at the university that aims to develop forward-looking AI-enabled technologies for materials design and synthesis.
Is it a reflection of some pessimism in regard to the current status of support for science in the US?
Ram Seshadri, University of California, Santa Barbara
This unprecedented coverage of an academic simply moving to another university appears to signal a growing anxiety over the Trump administration’s handling of science and research funding. Yaghi, who was born in Jordan to a refugee family that was originally from Palestine and holds Jordanian, American and Saudi citizenship, has publicly criticised the current White House’s cuts to US federal research agency budgets and immigration policies.
During an interview with China Global Television Network right after joining Tsinghua, Yaghi said China is ‘quite an impressive country’ and that it is ‘rapidly developing almost all aspects of science and technology’. He added that this was the result of a dedicated and sustained ‘commitment to funding research at a level that allows scientists to explore and develop new ideas’.
Yaghi has ties to Tsinghua after being appointed an honorary professor in January 2022.
When asked for a response to Yaghi’s move abroad, UC Berkeley congratulated him on the appointment at Tsinghua but would not comment on whether he had packed up his lab and taken any of his PhD students, postdocs or research grants with him. The university simply said: ‘We are grateful for all that he has contributed to UC Berkeley.’
A warning signal
Neal Lane, a physicist who served as science adviser to former president Bill Clinton and previously as director of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), says Yaghi’s departure should serve as a warning. ‘The administration’s policies are dismantling the foundations of America’s science and threatening the nation’s future,’ Lane tells Chemistry World.
I am concerned that Professor Yaghi’s case may reflect more ‘push’ than earlier cases
Jeremy Berg, former director National Institute of General Medical Sciences
Furthermore, Lane expresses concern that the NSF’s move to ban research collaborations with certain Chinese universities will ‘hinder America’s progress in science and technology by cutting off a vital source of expertise’. He urges Congress to ‘take note’.
At issue is a policy the NSF proposed on 8 July, which is slated to take effect on 1 October, that would bar US colleges and universities from collaborating with many Chinese scientists and other entities on the US government’s restricted parties lists. Prominent Chinese research universities are included on these lists, including Nanjing University, Beijing Institute of Technology and the University of Science and Technology of China.
Jeremy Berg, a biochemist who served as director of the US National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, is also worried. ‘I am concerned that Professor Yaghi’s case may reflect more “push” than earlier cases with the decimation of NSF, loss of students and postdoctoral fellows, even at top-flight places such as UC Berkeley, and the general attacks on universities and science across the US,’ he says.
Yaghi is not the first US-based chemistry Nobel laureate to leave for China in recent years. In 2023, Fraser Stoddart, who shared the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2016 for his work on molecular machines and passed away at the age of 82 at the end of 2024, relocated to the department of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong.
Stoddart, who held dual British and US citizenship, was a vocal critic of the Trump administration. ‘I don’t want to toot my own horn but I saw this coming and it played a small part in my decision to move from US to Hong Kong last year,’ he told Chemistry World after Trump was re-elected US president in November 2024. ‘I felt that it was more than likely that Trump could become president again and I really didn’t want to continue to live in the country,’ he added at the time.
Notable chemists departing for China
Also in July, Zhang Wei, who chaired the chemistry department at the University of Colorado Boulder and was a faculty member in that department for 19 years, returned to China to join Great Bay University (GBU). Zhang, who was born in China, was appointed deputy dean of Great Bay’s school of physical sciences.
In late April 2025, the embattled former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department, Charles Lieber, who was convicted of failing to disclose significant Chinese funding in December 2021 and avoided a prison sentence in April 2023 after being sentenced to time served, joined Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School and now serves in the Institute of Materials Research.
A few months later, in autumn 2025, organic chemist and materials scientist Fang Lei, who chaired the chemistry department at Texas A&M University, moved to Yongjiang Laboratory as director of the Center for Functional Organic Materials. Born in China, he had worked in the US for nearly two decades and was mentored by Stoddart.
Ram Seshadri, a chemist and materials scientist who is associate dean for research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says prominent US scientists moving to institutions in other countries isn’t unusual. Seshadri points to a long history of US scientists moving to Max Planck Institutes and top universities in Germany, the UK and Switzerland. And in recent years, he says Canada, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and, increasingly, China have joined that list.
‘Chinese origin scientists moving to China is not perhaps as remarkable,’ Seshadri tells Chemistry World. But he notes that Stoddart, Lieber and Yaghi were not born in China.
‘Is the pace picking up and, if it is, is it a reflection of some pessimism in regard to the current status of support for science in the US?’ Seshadri asks. ‘I think it is to be seen.’ He adds: ‘The US scientific enterprise is enormous and it is not clear that other countries have the capacity to absorb very large numbers of US scientists.’
