Francisco Martin-Martinez, Lab Leader
Francisco Martin-Martinez is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at King’s College London and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Swansea University. He is also a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2022, he was recognized as a Google Research Innovator for his work in computational chemistry and collaborates with Google Cloud on chemical reactivity predictions using cloud supercomputing.
Before his tenure at Swansea University, he served as a Research Scientist at MIT’s Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM) from 2014 to 2020. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral researcher (2011-2013) in the Quantum Chemistry Group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
He earned his degrees in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry from the University of Granada, Spain, where he was part of the Modelling and Molecular Design Group. During his final PhD year, he was a visiting researcher at Hamburg University.
At King’s, Fran leads the MMLab, a multidisciplinary research group dedicated to nature-learned matter. The lab integrates computational chemistry, machine learning, and biomimicry to develop sustainable materials inspired by natural systems. A key focus is understanding materials degradation pathways to improve performance and durability. Their research utilizes biomass—including lignin, cellulose, and chitin—and biobased feedstocks like biocrude oils and biochar to create materials with tailored properties for applications in self-healing infrastructure, precision agriculture, and energy storage.
Additionally, Francisco Martin-Martinez is a co-instructor at Station1 (USA), a scientific advisor at 2050Materials, and a consultant at PODIUM Strategy and Marketing. He previously served as President (2018-2019) and Vice-president (2016-2018) of the Spanish Scientists in the USA (ECUSA). He has also been a program leader for the “Circular Economy and Sustainability Strategies” course at the Cambridge Judge Business School.
His professional affiliations include memberships in the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ). He also sits on the revision panels for the European Commission Fellowships program ADMIRE, the Spanish Ramon y Cajal grants, and Chile’s Fondecyt program.