Tomas L. Martin

Dr Tomas L. Martin is Associate Professor in Materials Physics at the University of Bristol, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Materials Today Communications and a science fiction and fantasy writer based in Bristol, England.

Dr Martin leads a research group of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers investigating the influence of microstructure of materials on degradation processes such as corrosion, creep cavitation and thermal ageing. He uses advanced correlative microscopy together with multiscale modelling to understand the mechanisms of how small changes in material structures lead to degradation, with applications in nuclear fission and fusion, aerospace and renewable energy.

Dr Martin is director of the MSc in Nuclear Science and Engineering at the University of Bristol and teaches modules on Materials Physics and the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

Tomas completed a PhD in semiconductor physics at the University of Bristol in 2011, researching a novel new solar energy device using artificial diamond. He subsequently joined renewable energy consultancy Wind Prospect, where he worked in the Advisory Services division, consulting on large-scale wind and solar power projects across the world. 

In 2013 he returned to academia at the University of Oxford, where he was lab manager in the atom probe group. He used the advanced characterisation capabilities of atom probe tomography to investigate the atomic-scale chemistry of many materials systems, from steels and nickel-based alloys for aircraft, zirconium and uranium for nuclear fission, silicon, gallium nitride and diamond semiconductor devices and biomaterials including bone and heart tissue.

In 2017 he became a Lecturer in Materials Physics at the University of Bristol, returning to the Physics Department where he got his degree. In 2023 he was promoted to Associate Professsor in Materials Physics You can read more about his scientific work on the Science part of this website.

Tomas’s short fiction has appeared in venues such as Nature Futures, Digital Science Fiction and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine  Show. He has published several  novels as part of his role as co-lead writer of the Maelstrom's Edge miniatures game.

He has also been involved in other projects in film and nonfiction, including as curator of Screentest, the UK National Student Film Festival, in 2008.

When not conducting scientific research or writing fiction, Tomas likes to cycle, listen to music, paint miniatures and indulge in every type of storytelling he can get his hands on.