Adam Martin completed his PhD at UWA in 2011 with Professor Colin Raston in the area of supramolecular chemistry. He then commenced a postdoctoral position at the University of Nottingham with Professor Martin Schröder synthesising novel ligands for new metal organic frameworks. In 2013 he moved to the University of New South Wales to work with Professor Pall Thordarson on deciphering the desgin rules in short peptide hydrogels. In 2016 he was awarded an NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Fellowship to use these scaffolds for culturing sensitive primary neurons, thus gaining insights into the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. He was promoted to Lecturer in early 2018 and in 2019 he commenced a position at Macquarie University as Leader of the Peptides and Proteins Group within the Dementia Research Centre.

Through his research, Adam has established a number of structure-property relationships for short, self-assembling peptides. He has shown that control over the peptide sequence and N-terminus can be used to tune the chemical and mechanical properties of resultant hydrogels. Adam is now focused on translating this knoweldge to the rational design of biocompatible hydrogel scaffolds for tissue engineering to support various cell types, including sensitive primary neurons. Current projects include:

• Devleopment of 3D neuronal cell culture scaffolds for insights into neurodegenerative disease.
• Functionalisation of hydrogels with ECM-ligating peptides for active capture of macromolecules.
• Self-assemlbimg short peptides as novel transfection reagents.
• Controlling temporal hydrogel scaffold degradation for biologically relevant cell profiling.