Originally from Paisley in the West of Scotland Martyn completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Paisley (now University of the West of Scotland) before undertaking a PhD at the University of Glasgow. In 2004 the move to London happened, starting at Imperial College as a postdoc before being awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship (2007-2012). Martyn was appointed as a  a Lecturer in 2013, and promoted to  full-professor in 2020.

Teaching is a passion and Martyn currently contributes to several undergraduate and postgraduate courses, as well as overseeing a large piece of undergraduate coursework in Year 2. In the past Martyn has taught  He taught core and elective module across all undergraduate years in addition to holding numerous roles that support teaching and learning including course director of the MSc in Advanced Materials Science and Engineering and coding the role of director of undergraduate studies. Currently Martyn supports students across the Faculty of Engineering in the role of deputy faculty senior tutor and serves as the director for the jointly funded EPSRC-SFI centre for doctoral training in the advanced characterisation of materials (www.cdt-acm.org).

Current research interests lie in the area of functional electronic materials, more specifically their deposition and processing in optoelectronic devices. At the heart of this lies a fundamental desire to derive an understanding of the interplay between composition, processing and performance in a range of device platforms and to better understand the role of the numerous interfaces that exist at a variety of length-scales in such devices.