Ina Martin (she/her/hers) is the director of research cores and operations in the Office of Research and Technology Management. She oversees and coordinates CWRU’s research core infrastructure. As part of her duties, she is working to design, coordinate and implement research spaces in the university’s forthcoming Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and the 11000 Cedar Startup Incubator. Martin is the subject matter expert for cores and facilities at the university. With a longstanding interest in and commitment to growing and stabilizing CWRU’s research infrastructure, Dr. Martin’s leadership efforts focus on initiating and supporting cross-disciplinary, cross-school collaborations.
Prior to this role, Martin was the director of CWRU’s Materials for Opto/electronics Research and Education (MORE) Center for 13 years. Her multidisciplinary background and strong mentoring and leadership skills enabled the MORE Center to fulfill its mission of interdisciplinary research, education and public outreach. As an adjunct professor, her research explores the chemistry and physics of materials deposition, characterization and degradation processes. Her work spans diverse materials applications—from efficient and durable photovoltaics to technical art history. Her passion for education and outreach focuses on advocacy fighting the climate crisis and promoting scientific literacy. Martin received her PhD in analytical chemistry in 2005 from Colorado State University, researching low-temperature plasmas. Her keen interest in renewable energy led to postdoctoral work in applied physics. She researched thin-film photovoltaic devices, first with the Eindhoven University of Technology Plasma Materials and Processing Group, and then with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Silicon Materials and Devices group. She joined the research community at CWRU in 2010.