Born into a family of Palestinian refugees in the desert outside Amman, Jordan, Yaghi moved to the United States at age 15 to continue his education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the State University of New York at Albany and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before earning a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
Yaghi is founding director of Berkeley Global Science Institutee, senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-director of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute. He also holds 60 US patents and has been awarded prestigious awards from 17 countries.
In a statement released that same day by the UC Berkeley School of Chemistry, Yaghi said it is a great honor to receive this prestigious award. The researcher added that his field of lattice chemistry will continue to be vital to creating viable sustainability solutions.
Created by Taiwanese businessman Samuel Yin in 2012 and first awarded two years later, the biennial Tang Prize recognizes achievements in four categories: sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, sinology and rule of law. Each prize is worth 50 million Taiwan dollars (1.54 million US dollars).
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