Rate My Professor Ignacio Martin-Fabiani

Ignacio Martin-Fabiani is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Materials Science in the Department of Materials at Loughborough University, where he also holds the position of Deputy Research Director. He leads an experimental research group focused on soft matter science and engineering. Martin-Fabiani earned his BSc in Materials Physics from Complutense University of Madrid in 2008, MSc in Plastics and Rubber from Menéndez Pelayo International University in 2010, and PhD from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Complutense University of Madrid in 2013. Additionally, he completed the Medici Enterprise Training Programme at the University of Birmingham in 2022. His academic career at Loughborough began with a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship in 2016, progressing to his current senior lectureship. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC), and a member of the International Polymer Colloids Group.

Martin-Fabiani's research specializations encompass fundamental soft matter and colloidal science, functional coatings including antibacterial, abrasion-resistant, and photocatalytic varieties, data-driven liquid formulation optimisation, microplastics detection and characterisation, and sustainability assessments. As principal investigator, he has secured major grants such as the £1.1 million UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (2020-2025) for a bioinspired platform technology for next-generation functional paints and coatings, its £567,000 renewal (2025-2028), the EPSRC-NSF Harnessing colloidal engineering for new opacifiers (£660,000, 2025-2028), and the Horizon Europe SSbD4CheM project (€7.5 million, 2024-2027). His accolades include the 2024 Science Award at the Coatings Science International Conference, 2020 UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, 2019 Polymer Lecture Exchange Award by the Institute of Physics and American Physical Society, 2016 Santander Mobility Award, and 2015 Award for the best PhD thesis using synchrotron light by the Spanish Synchrotron User Association. Key publications comprise 'Tunable assembly of photocatalytic colloidal coatings for antibacterial applications' (ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 2024), 'Understanding associative polymer self-assembly with shrinking gate fluorescence correlation spectroscopy' (Nanoscale, 2024), 'Ballistic thermal phonons traversing nanocrystalline domains in oriented polyethylene' (PNAS, 2019), and 'Dynamical density functional theory for the drying and stratification of binary colloidal dispersions' (Langmuir, 2021). His work impacts coatings technology, polymer nanocomposites, and sustainable materials through advancements in colloidal assembly and antibacterial surfaces. Martin-Fabiani lectures in Colloid Science and Engineering (CPG010) and Design and Make 2 (CGB024), and supervises final-year and master's projects.