Lane W. Martin is the Director for the Rice Advanced Materials Institute and the Robert A. Welch Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Chemistry, and Physics and Astronomy. Lane is also a Faculty Senior Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Lane received his B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Dec. 2003 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2006 and 2008, respectively. From 2008 to 2009, Lane served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Quantum Materials Program, Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

From 2009 to 2014, Lane was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Lane returned to the University of California, Berkeley as an Associate Professor from 2014-2018. He was promoted to Professor in July 2018 and served as Vice/Associate Chair from 2018-2021. From 2021 to 2023, Lane was a Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and served as both the Secretary and Chair (elected) of the Faculty of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined Rice University in July 2023.

Lane has published >300 papers, his work has been cited ~32,000 times (resulting in an h-index = 78). Lane’s contributions to physical and materials science are broad reaching, but his focus is on advancing the synthesis, characterization, and utilization of emergent function (be that electronic, ferroic, multiferroic, etc.) in complex oxides. He applies innovative synthesis of highly controlled, epitaxial thin-film materials with special attention to accessing new states of matter, uses growth and epitaxy to access new insights about fundamental materials physics, and pushes the edge of material response via strain, defect, and interfacial engineering. Lane's work has garnered numerous awards including: 2022-2024 Defense Science Study Group, multiple-time Highly Cited Researcher, IEEE-Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (UFFC) Society Ferroelectrics Young Investigator Award (2019), the Robert L. Coble Award for Young Scholars from the American Ceramic Society (2016), the American Association for Crystal Growth (AACG) Young Author Award (2015), the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2014), the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2013), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2012), the Army Research Office Young Investigator Program Award (2010), and others.  Lane has been elected as a Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS, 2024), the American Ceramics Society (ACerS, 2023), and the American Physical Society (APS, 2022).