Climate and Environment
Accelerating solutions and research to equip the next generation of innovators with solutions to protect our planet
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Omar Yaghi, a Jordanian-American chemist and scientific advisor to the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Yaghi shared the award with Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Japan.
The scientists were cited for creating “molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow. These constructions, metal-organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyze chemical reactions.”
Modeling tools for policymakers
Researchers at the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center for Data Science & Environment co-developed an open source modeling tool that provides global policymakers with unprecedented analytical and computing power to reach environmental and climate goals. The Kigali Sim tool was designed in partnership with the United Nations and a dozen countries and supporting organizations.
"Kigali Sim improves global regulation of highly potent greenhouse gases," said Sam Pottinger, senior research data scientist. "The tool simulates possible outcomes of policy interventions with greater efficiency and ease than previously possible."
Molecular sponge pulls water from air
A new material developed by BIDMaP researchers captures carbon dioxide from outdoor air with unprecedented speed, marking a critical leap toward practical direct air capture technology. The development of such technologies aim to avert the worst effects of climate change from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
"Working on a material that connects deep chemistry with an urgent global challenge has been incredibly meaningful,” said Zihui Zhou, a BIDMaP postdoctoral fellow.
Mary Robinson on climate justice
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, visited campus to present the CDSS Dean’s Distinguished Lecture on Shared Futures.
Robinson discussed the need to cultivate “long-view leadership that is based on science and evidence but also empathy for different people affected in different ways, taking into account not just the current generation, but also future generations.”
Photo credits — 1: NOAA via Unsplash; 2: Brittany Hosea-Small/ UC Berkeley; 3: Courtesy of Schmidt Center Data Science and Environment; 4: Robert Sanders/UC Berkeley; 5: KLC fotos/ Marcus Edwards; video: UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society