“It looks useless, but ultimately it's useful." For chemist Susumu Kitagawa there is more to something that looks useless than meets the eye. He spent years working on chemical structures that others thought had no potential use. But he saw himself as a pioneer – someone that could create new things out of what seemed like nothing. He received the Nobel Prize in 2025 alongside Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi for the development of MOFs – chemical structures that have the ability to store and release molecules like water and carbon dioxide. In his Nobel Prize interview Kitagawa describes his scientific journey and the principle he lives by: “the usefulness of useless.” Watch now: nobelprize.org/prizes/chemis…