Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies are becoming increasingly necessary toward the mitigation of anthropogenic climate change. Direct air capture (DAC) is one form of CDR that describes the capture of carbon dioxide from air via purely engineered approaches. According to some model projections, society may need to remove more than one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year with DAC by the year 2050. In spite of this massive demand, industrial DAC operations are currently hampered by high cost and energy expense. Matt’s research seeks to identify and test new materials capable of performing DAC at lower cost and energy requirement than the current state-of-the-art. His current interests are centered on a class of porous materials known as metal–organic frameworks, which can capture and release large amounts of carbon dioxide using only a small amount of material.