Todd Martinez showed up at his University of Illinois office expecting to participate in an ordinary conference call. But the conference call turned out to be a ruse. It was just a way to get him into his office for a phone call informing him that he was one of 25 recipients of the prestigious "genius grants" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Martinez, a professor of chemistry in LAS, says he reacted with "shock and disbelief." The 37-year-old theoretical chemist will receive $500,000 from the MacArthur Foundation over five years, no strings attached.
"The call can be life-changing, coming as it does out of the blue and offering highly creative women and men the gift of time and the unfettered opportunity to explore, create, and contribute," says Jonathan F. Fanon, president of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation.
As a theoretical chemist, Martinez probes the complex behavior of atoms and electrons in chemical reactions. For instance, he and his team recently broke through several bottlenecks on the way to explaining how atoms and electrons respond to light.
This opens the door to the possibility of designing molecules that can be both powered and controlled by light. Martinez envisions many uses, including biomedical possibilities such as designing molecules that can release drugs into the body with unprecedented precision.
In electronics, the result could be circuits that can switch on and off at tremendous speeds.
"The field is wide open," he says.
Martinez was born in New York, but he grew up in Central America and the Caribbean. He came to the U. of I. in 1996, where he has shown innovative thinking in his research and even in the way he musters up enough computer power to analyze his data. Several years ago, Martinez caught the attention of many when he linked together numerous PlayStation 2 units to create a computing system with the power of a supercomputer.
Martinez is not the first LAS professor to be named a MacArthur Fellow. Previous recipients include the acclaimed novelist Richard Powers in English, Carl Woese in microbiology, and Susan Kieffer in geology.
