From Molecules to Hope: Sneak Peeks Into the Future of Science

Growing up among farmers in Sudan, Altyeb Ali Abaker Omer has witnessed firsthand the harsh realities of water stress, energy scarcity and food insecurity. Today, he is optimistic that his research at the intersection of optical engineering, smart agriculture, and climate-resilient food production can improve the situation back home. Omer was one of the panellists at a discussion during the 75^th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting which was moderated by Chemistry Laureate Omar M. Yaghi, himself a product of challenging circumstances and humble beginnings. The son of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Yaghi remembers what it’s like to live without running water and electricity. This makes his journey in chemistry even more remarkable.

At a Lecture he delivered on the day before the Panel Discussion, Yaghi shared how he encountered stick figure diagrams of molecules in a book in the local public library and felt drawn to them even before he knew what they were. A couple of decades later, in 1999, his team managed to create a porous molecular structure called MOF-5, which had a surface area equivalent to 2,900 meters square per gram – imagine a sugar cube containing the space of a football field. MOF-5 seemed to break all existing records of porosity, meaning it had the capacity to hold an unprecedented amount of matter within it. “I was terrified as an assistant professor to publish a paper saying I had broken a record for porosity held for 1000 years by carbon,” Yaghi recalled in his Lecture. This invention is usually credited for kicking off the field of metal-organic framework chemistry, which in 2025 won Yaghi, Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

A Blockbuster Construction

Metal-organic frameworks or MOFs are crystals designed to have large cavities that can capture and store specific substances. A MOF that is especially close to Yaghi’s heart is the water-adsorbing MOF-303, which his team invented in 2018. No stranger to the global water crisis, Yaghi was immediately aware of the potential of this material, but it wasn’t till five years later that his team came up with a way to take this from the lab to the real world. This was when they developed a MOF-based water harvester capable of extracting moisture from the air at night and releasing it as liquid water during the day using only ambient sunlight.

The team went all the way to the ruthless Death Valley region to test its performance during peak summer. They demonstrated that the device could harvest “114–210 g of water per kilogram of MOF per day under ambient temperature swing of 21.9 to 60.7 °C between night and day with a relative humidity ranging from 9.4% to 36%”. Importantly, the water collected is ultra-pure as the MOF behaves as an ultra filter. “That’s how wonderful chemistry is: just by adding two atoms, you can stretch the pores to accommodate more water!” exclaimed Yaghi.

What lies between MOF-303 and the realization of water supply as a basic human right is commercialization, but Yaghi believes that this is on the near horizon. He brought up the example of CALF-20, a MOF invented by his colleague George Shimizu, that is already being deployed in cement plants in Canada to remove carbon dioxide from their emissions. It is, in Shimizu’s words “basically a molecular sponge that can adsorb CO₂ very efficiently”. This, according to Yaghi, is a blockbuster application. Various other MOFs with specific powers have been invented since then – some store toxic gases or catalyze chemical reactions, others separate proteins, act as a cargo for biomolecules or store hydrogen for clean energy.

But MOFs, even CALF-20, are not ideal to suck up carbon dioxide directly from air. This is because air contains too many different kinds of gases, and MOFs aren’t stable enough to extract just the carbon di-oxide efficiently. This is where COFs come in. In 2005, Yaghi’s lab discovered this cousin of MOFs that they called covalent organic frameworks (COF). COFs, he described, have an enhanced feature of thermal and chemical stability. He introduced the audience to a yellow powder, COF-999, that is really good at sucking up carbon dioxide from the air. According to Yaghi’s projections, this material can realistically get us out of the carbon emission mess we have put ourselves in, especially if nations – at least the ones in the G20 – put their mind to it. “We are getting closer and closer to commercialization,” he promised.

Critical Perspectives

Yaghi’s story is sure to have inspired the 600+ Young Scientists from all over the world who were present at the Meeting this year. Five among them – from Sudan, Oman, Malaysia, Peru and the Philippines – would join him on stage the following day for Panel Discussion on the topic of “Discussion Priorities in Research From a Global Perspective”.

In her opening statement, one of them, geologist Kathrine Maxwell, shone light on how inequities in the research ecosystem can affect the majority of the world’s population who live in underrepresented regions. She said that the well-known estimation of 1 metre rise of sea level by 2100 is based largely on research from just a few dominant countries and doesn’t apply to others. As a result, the so-called emerging countries are not able to be adequately prepared for the impact of climate change. She advocated for more researchers to focus on addressing these gaps. “Scientists keep asking further questions, but rarely fill in the data gap. We need to encourage more of this,” she said.

Karen Arulsamy, a Malaysian mental health economist on the panel, drew attention to the mental health crisis. According to a report by The Lancet Psychiatry, the mental health of young people has seriously deteriorated over the last two decades. The trend was attributed to a number of factors including inaction on climate change, intergenerational inequality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Arulsamy noted that early intervention and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are extremely effective, however they tend to be manpower-intensive and may not be as easy to scale in some countries, especially when stigma and ignorance are involved.

On a similar vein, Altyeb Ali Abaker Omer pointed out that though advanced technologies like agriphotovoltaics can help farmers in his home nation of Sudan, there is a social acceptance problem. Many rely on the government to help them, and lack trust in solar panels to solve their water and energy issues, he said.

Practical Priorities

Talking about barriers that need to be bridged for science to make change, Daniel Lachos Perez, a Peruvian chemical engineer studying chemical recycling of plastic waste in Brazil, highlighted a very practical one: language. “Look at where I am now – speaking my second, maybe third, language in front of brilliant minds! Ideas matter more than language,” he remarked.

The panellists agreed that collaboration between countries was key in bridging these gaps, but we are still some way off from being able to do so. Removing visa restrictions for scientists would be a huge shot in the arm towards this goal, Maxwell asserted. Another important enabler for young researchers from emerging countries is effective mentorship. Arulsamy described what this could look like: “There is an invisible curriculum in academia that we are expected to learn on the job,” she said. This includes how to appeal to funders, how to get promotions in the university, opening doors to opportunities – these are all as important as research skills and good mentors can teach you this, she insisted.

Women’s participation is crucial for an equitable science ecosystem, emphasized Sara Al-Araimi, a biotechnologist who shared some wisdom from her country of Oman: “In our country, women’s participation is very strong. This is a result of long term investment in higher education, a high quality of education and leaders who believe that women’s views are important.”

When the conditions for Young Scientists from diverse identities and backgrounds are favourable, the consequences can be momentous. The journey of Omar Yaghi, who first met molecules as a 10-year-old in a public library in Jordan and later went on to win a Nobel Prize for his research on them, is a testament to this. Even in his own field, Yaghi’s young colleagues have played a leading role and he made a point to acknowledge this fact during his Lecture. “Students are my heroes,” he declared unequivocally. He informed the audience that the door to the world of MOFs was opened by a woman student and the initial breakthrough to COFs came from another undergraduate woman student.

Discoveries can come from anyone, from anywhere, including people from humble beginnings, he reminded everyone. “Science is a magnificent equalizing force. Anyone can make a discovery provided they do the experiment.”