A researcher from Sapienza University among the speakers at the commemorative event marking 30 years of the European MSCA programme
On Thursday, October 1, 2026, Francesco Tavani, researcher on the AQUAFRAME project, will take part as a speaker at the European Commission’s commemorative event, “Celebrating 30 years of MSCA: Curiosity that changes the world”. The event, organised to mark the 30th anniversary of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), will bring together leading figures from Europe’s scientific and political communities in Brussels. Tavani will speak as part of the High-Level Event panel entitled “Young minds, global impact”, a session dedicated to the emerging research talent driving scientific innovation and delivering tangible impact on a global scale.
The AQUAFRAME project, funded under the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship programme, addresses one of the most pressing global challenges: the development of innovative technologies based on nanoporous materials (MOFs – Metal-Organic Frameworks) for capturing and sustainably producing drinking water from atmospheric moisture. The research will be conducted under the scientific supervision of Paola D’Angelo, Professor of Physical Chemistry at Sapienza University (the project’s Host Institution), and Omar Yaghi, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate. As part of the project, Tavani will carry out the first phase of his research over a two-year period at the Californian laboratory led by Omar Yaghi, before completing the project with the return phase at Sapienza.
AQUAFRAME Project Focus
Efficiently capturing water from the air: this is at the heart of the AQUAFRAME project – Advancing QUASIperiodic metal-organic FRAMEworks for atmospheric water harvesting, which has been awarded €420,000 in European Marie Skłodowska-Curie funding under the HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships call.
Distributed atmospheric water harvesting using sustainable materials is an innovative approach that holds great promise for addressing and helping to resolve the water crisis that has affected the world in recent decades. This process makes use of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), highly porous crystalline materials made up of metal atoms connected by organic molecules. These materials can absorb significant quantities of gaseous molecules such as water or carbon dioxide, which can subsequently be released in a controlled manner. Thanks to their unprecedented porosity and chemical versatility, MOFs have recently emerged as ideal candidates for atmospheric water harvesting under real-world conditions. However, the water-harvesting systems developed to date have several limitations, including high energy consumption and low water productivity in non-temperate climates. Against this backdrop, AQUAFRAME aims to develop and characterise innovative MOFs with optimal properties for capturing water from the atmosphere. The project will combine experiments at synchrotron facilities with artificial intelligence methods. By using particle accelerators capable of generating extremely intense X-rays, researchers will be able to obtain molecular-level insights into how disorder influences water uptake in MOFs. This will pave the way for the design of next-generation water-harvesting systems capable of surpassing current performance records.
Profiles
Francesco Tavani (MSCA Fellow, AQUAFRAME project) was a student at the Sapienza School for Advanced Studies (SSAS), in the Science and Technology class, from 2014 to 2019. In 2023, he obtained a PhD in Chemical Sciences from Sapienza under the supervision of Professor Paola D’Angelo. He was awarded an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship (Global Fellowship) for the AQUAFRAME research project, which he will carry out as a Fellow under the scientific supervision of Professor Omar Yaghi at UC Berkeley and Professor Paola D’Angelo at Sapienza. Paola D’Angelo (Supervisor – Sapienza Host Institution) is Professor of Physical Chemistry at Sapienza University, Senior Fellow of the Sapienza School for Advanced Studies (SSAS), and President of SILS (Italian Synchrotron Light Society). She serves as Francesco Tavani’s supervisor at Sapienza as part of his MSCA Fellowship.
Omar Yaghi (Supervisor – UC Berkeley Partner Organisation) is Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate. He will host Francesco Tavani in his laboratory during the outgoing phase of the project in the United States, providing the scientific supervision and advanced training expected by the MSCA project.