2025 Nobel Prizes: Wins for UCLA and a record-setting year for the University of California

UCLA alumnus Fred Ramsdell and former UCLA professor Omar Yaghi both won Nobel Prizes in 2025, a year in which the University of California set a world record for the most Nobels awarded to one university system.

"These remarkable achievements by five UC-affiliated Nobel Prize winners reflect the very best of the world-changing teaching, research and public service happening across our university," said UC President James B. Milliken . "Our nation and world will be better off because of these discoveries."

Discover more below about this year's UCLA-affiliated winners.

UCLA alumnus Fred Ramsdell wins 2025 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine

Ramsdell, an immunologist who earned his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from UCLA, answered one of biology's most profound questions: Why doesn't the immune system attack the body it's meant to protect?

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Video: Bruin Nobel winner Fred Ramsdell on UCLA, research funding and his 'Nobel dinner'

The 2025 laureate discusses how his experiences at UCLA shaped his scientific career, why federal funding is crucial to biomedical research that saves and improves lives, and his spur-of-the-moment celebratory Nobel meal.

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3 alumni Nobel laureates recount how UCLA set them on a path to the prize

Newly minted Nobel laureate Fred Ramsdell and UCLA's two other most recent alumni Nobel winners - Ardem Patapoutian and Randy Schekman - explain why their time as Bruins loomed large in their scientific development.

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Former UCLA faculty member Omar Yaghi wins 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry

Yaghi, who conducted some of his most fruitful and groundbreaking research at UCLA from 2006 to 2011 , won the Nobel for developing metal-organic frameworks, which can be used to capture and store toxic gases, drive chemical reactions and even harvest water from desert air.

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