September 14, 2026 12:59

The 2026 Natta Award will be presented on Thursday, 17 September, to Susumu Kitagawa, co-recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).

The ceremony is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. at the Leonardo Campus of Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy. It will be followed by Kitagawa’s lecture, The Chemistry of Molecular Space: From Porous Frameworks to Soft Porous Crystals.

Kitagawa shared the Nobel Prize with Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi. MOFs are porous crystalline structures made up of metal ions linked by organic molecules, forming cavities that can host other molecules. Potential applications include gas capture and separation, gas storage, catalysis and water treatment.

A key milestone in Kitagawa’s research came in 1997, when his group experimentally demonstrated the reversible adsorption and release of gases in structures now known as porous coordination polymers (PCPs), or MOFs. Kitagawa subsequently also investigated the behaviour of so-called soft porous crystals, which will be the focus of his lecture in Milan.

Established in 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of Giulio Natta receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Natta Award is presented by the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” at Politecnico di Milano to leading researchers who have distinguished themselves in the Department’s scientific fields of interest.

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