2009 Charles N. Reilley Awardee

Charles R. Martin, Ph.D.

Colonel Allen R. and Margaret G. Crow Professor of Chemistry

University of Florida

Charles R. Martin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1953.  He graduated with High Distinction from Centre College of Kentucky in 1975 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  He did his graduate work at the University of Arizona, obtaining a PhD in analytical chemistry in 1980 under the direction of Prof. Henry Freiser.  He then moved to the University of Texas at Austin where he was a Robert A. Welch Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Allen J. Bard.  He took his first faculty appointment as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University in 1981 and was promoted to Full Professor in 1989.  He then moved to the Department of Chemistry at Colorado State University. and then in 1999 to the University of Florida.

His research interests are in the areas of nanoscience and bioanalytical chemistry.  Beginning in the 1980s, his research group pioneered a powerful and versatile approach for preparing nanomaterials called template synthesis.  The template method entails using the pores in a nanopore solid to make nanowires or nanotubes of a desired material.  This method has since become a workhorse procedure for preparing nanomaterials, and is used in laboratories throughout the world.  Its popularity stems from the fact that it is such a versatile method in terms of the types of nanomaterials one can synthesize by the template method.  For example, one can use the template method to make monodisperse nanotubes and nanowires composed of carbons, polymers, metals, semiconductors, proteins, DNA, and the high energy materials used in modern batteries.  As a result of this pioneering and seminal work, he is listed among the world’s top 20 cited authors in nanotechnology, and by ISI as a Highly Cited Author in Materials Science. 

His research currently focuses on applications of template-prepared nanotubes and nanotube membranes to biosensors and bioseparations – the bio/nano interface.   This work takes its inspiration from the protein channels that living systems use to selectively transport chemical species in and out of cells and to allow for electrical communication between cells.  For example, the Martin group is developing artificial ligand-gated ion channels, which function as biosensors and are capable of single-molecule detection.  He has published almost 300 papers on these and related subjects. 

Professor Martin was the 1999 recipient of the Carl Wagner Memorial Award of the Electrochemical Society and the 2005 recipient of the Florida Award of the Florida Section of the American Chemical Society.  He was promoted to University Distinguished Professor in 2006.  In 2007 he received a Nano 50 Innovator Award from Nanotech Briefs. He will be the 2009 recipient of the Charles N. Reilley award of the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry.  He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, and served, or is serving, on the editorial advisory boards of Chemistry of Materials, Advanced Materials, Nanomedicine, Journal of Bionanoscience and Small.  He is also the U.S. Senior Editor of the journal Nanomedicine.