Playing Lego with chemistry to build structures that could save the environment.
Download MP3Omar Yaghi is a chemist with an extraordinary vision. The pioneer of MOFs (metal organic frameworks) - materials built from the molecular equivalent of LEGO bricks. He tells Tim and Syma about his humble beginnings in a cramped room in Amman, Jordan- where the conditions were limited, but his vision certainly wasn’t.
A chance encounter with a chemical model building kit, set him on a pathway of discovery.
Flying in the face of conventional chemical wisdom, he built large, well defined, ultra porous chemicals structures from individual building blocks. These structures are now being explored to salvage water from arid enviroments, to extract carbon dioxide from the environment and keep it locked away so it cannot amplify the ‘greenhouse effect’.
His vision and the new chemistry it has produced has the potential to combat global warming, to provide clean drinking water and remove harmful plastics from the environment.
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A chance encounter with a chemical model building kit, set him on a pathway of discovery.
Flying in the face of conventional chemical wisdom, he built large, well defined, ultra porous chemicals structures from individual building blocks. These structures are now being explored to salvage water from arid enviroments, to extract carbon dioxide from the environment and keep it locked away so it cannot amplify the ‘greenhouse effect’.
His vision and the new chemistry it has produced has the potential to combat global warming, to provide clean drinking water and remove harmful plastics from the environment.
If you are a business and would like to take advantage and leverage the power of the fast growing podcast ad stream market, and in particular sponsoring 'Science Of The Times', please drop us a line - streamingspirespodcasts@gmail.com
Advertising via podcasts is a cost efficient way of reaching a wider market.
Creators and Guests
Host
Tim Coulson
Author of The Universal History of Us published by Penguin 2024 Professor of Zoology, University of Oxford EcologyEvolution, Existence, Science
Guest
Omar Yaghi
Omar M. Yaghi received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. He is the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. He is the Founding Director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute whose mission is to build centers of research in developing countries and provide opportunities for young scholars to discover and learn. He is also the Co-Director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute (Kavli ENSI) focusing on the basic science of energy transformation on the molecular level, the California Research Alliance by BASF (CARA) supporting joint academia-industry innovations, as well as the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP) which aims to develop cost-efficient, easily deployable versions of two classes of ultra porous materials – known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) – to help limit and address the impacts of climate change.
