Eddaoudi received his BS degree in chemistry from Ibn Zohr University in 1991, and his MSc (1992) and PhD (1996) degrees from University Paris VII, France. He began his academic career at the University of South Florida, becoming a full professor in 2009. In the same year, he joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as a founding faculty member. He is currently the Ibn Alhaytham distinguished professor of chemistry and chair of the Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials platform at KAUST. His research has been at the forefront of reticular chemistry and porous materials for nearly three decades. He conceived and developed transformative design strategies, including the supermolecular building block and supermolecular building layer approaches, as well as net-coded building units and merged-net methodologies, enabling the rational construction of programmable porous materials, such as metal-organic frameworks, with encoded structural and functional attributes. His work has led to the development of advanced materials capable of precise molecular recognition and exceptional selectivity, particularly for CO₂ capture and energy-efficient separations.

Nunes is a professor of chemical and environmental science and engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, where she also served as vice provost for faculty and academic affairs. Prior to joining KAUST, she led the Department of Membranes for Renewable Energy at the Helmholtz Association, in Germany and was previously an assistant and associate professor of physical chemistry at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, following a postdoctoral Humboldt Fellowship in Mainz, Germany. In recognition of her contributions to physical sciences (chemistry), Nunes was named the international 2023 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for Africa and the Arab States. She is a Fellow of the São Paulo Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the North American Membrane Society, and an honorary member of the European Membrane Society.