Nobel Prize-winning chemist Omar Yaghi has left the United States to take up a full-time position at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he will head a new artificial intelligence-assisted materials discovery institute.
The move, first reported by the South China Morning Post, comes as the Trump administration continues efforts to cut US science funding and restrict international research collaborations.
Several countries, including China and France, have reportedly sought to capitalise on the funding squeeze by offering incentives to attract US-based scientists, with some Chinese cities and provinces reportedly offering lump sums and monthly relocation allowances.
Yaghi had held an honorary professorship at Tsinghua since 2022 and was formally inducted as a full-time faculty member at a ceremony on July 3, the outlet reported.
In an earlier interview with Scientific American, cited by Nature, Yaghi said the state of American science was discouraging given funding cutbacks and reduced government support that academic researchers depend on.
He also expressed concern that US researchers were falling behind in adopting artificial intelligence tools, calling deeper engagement with AI models essential to the survival of the country's advanced research system.
Born in Amman, Jordan, to Palestinian refugee parents, Yaghi moved to the US at age 15 and spent decades there before his relocation to China.
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He is known for pioneering metal-organic framework compounds — highly porous materials used in gas storage, catalysis, water harvesting and drug delivery — with chemists having since developed more than 100,000 variants of the technology, Nature reported.
Yaghi, who had been affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley since 2012, received a share of last year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with earlier honours including the Wolf Prize and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science.
He has also founded companies including Atoco and WaHa, both based in California, though associates told Nature his move would not affect either firm's operations.
Marina Zhang, a science-policy researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, told Nature that Yaghi's shift may reflect a desire to pursue a new research paradigm combining AI, chemistry and materials science following his Nobel win.
Tsinghua's chemistry department chair, Lei Liu, said the university hoped Yaghi would help bridge Eastern and Western scientific traditions.
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