Nobel Prize-winning chemist Omar Yaghi has left the United States to take a full-time position at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, where he will lead a new artificial intelligence-assisted materials discovery institute.

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The measure, first reported by the South China Morning PostIt comes as President Donald Trump’s administration continues its attempts to cut U.S. science spending and limit international research partnerships. Some nations, including China, have responded by trying to attract American talent with promises of money and support. Earlier this year, for example, France announced it would provide funding to dozens of American scientists moving there. China has been courting international researchers with talent recruitment programs, and some of its cities and provinces even offer researchers lump sums and monthly allowances to relocate within their borders.

Yaghi already had a connection to Tsinghua University: He became an honorary professor there in 2022. But he was officially welcomed as a full-time faculty member at a ceremony on July 3. Yaghi was not available to speak with Nature for this story.

However, in a recent interview with American scientist He said the current state of American science is “not so encouraging because of shrinking grants” and declining support from the American science agencies on which academic researchers depend. He was also concerned that American researchers were not embracing what he considers an “AI revolution.” Researchers must engage with AI models, he said, “as a matter of survival of the advanced research system in the United States.”

A pioneer in materials

Born in Amman, Jordan, the son of Palestinian refugees, Yaghi came to the United States at age 15 and had lived there until his recent move to China. He is best known for developing metal-organic framework (MOF) compounds, which are highly porous materials that have vast internal surfaces that make them capable of storing gases, serving as catalysts for chemical reactions, and more. Chemists have created more than 100,000 types of MOFs, with a view to using them in broad commercial applications, including harvesting water from the air and delivering drugs into the body.

Yaghi, who had been a researcher at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, since 2012, has won a number of awards for his contributions to materials science, including the Albert Einstein World Science Prize, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and, last year, a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He has also founded and co-founded several American companies, including Atoco in Irvine, California, which is developing materials for water harvesting and carbon capture, and WaHa in Fremont, California, which has created a device that converts “humidity into pure water while reducing energy costs for climate control,” according to WaHa’s website.

Yaghi will resign from WaHa’s board of directors in 2022, says Frank Ramirez, the company’s co-founder and CEO, adding that his business will not be affected by his move to China.

As for Atoco, Yaghi’s move will keep him more involved with the company than ever, says Samer Taha, the company’s chief executive. Atoco is collaborating with Yaghi Science Initiative, a non-profit organization launched by the Nobel laureate to connect researchers from multiple countries and support early career researchers in solving global challenges. Yaghi’s move to China is part of this global scientific initiative, Taha says, and will “multiply the opportunities for transformative discoveries.”

Address complex problems

One possible reason behind Yaghi’s decision could be that after winning his Nobel Prize, he wants to “do something else” and “build a new research paradigm by combining AI, chemistry and materials science,” says Marina Zhang, a science policy researcher at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia, who focuses on innovation in China.

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Tsinghua’s goal with Yaghi at the helm of its new program is to “address complex problems beyond any field” and unite “Eastern and Western intellectual traditions for the benefit of all humanity,” says Lei Liu, chair of the university’s chemistry department.