About Mr. Martinez

Chemical education:

  • BS in Chemistry, 2012 from Georgia State University

  • MSc in Chemistry with a concentration in organic synthesis, 2016 from Georgia State University

Research Experience

  • In anatomy class, the human body is taught with color-coded pictures. Cardiovascular systems are blue. Muscles are a pinkish red. Our research group wondered, "what if the body could really be visualized in this way? What if we could make this a reality so that surgeons could clearly delineate different tissues and organs?" Our group set out to do this by synthesizing novel dyes that fluoresce in the near-infrared range (NIR). This NIR is a dead space in biological systems where tissue neither absorbs nor emits light in these wavelengths. It also has the ability to penetrate deeply into tissue allowing for noninvasive visualization.

  • Our lab focused on the organic synthetic front end of this process. We would create and characterize dyes that had optimal optical properties and medicinal characteristics. We would ship these dyes to a lab at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston where they would test these dyes for imaging efficacy and toxicology in vivo with rats.

Teaching

I always thought that I wanted to be a scientist. In graduate school, we received tuition waivers and stipends for helping to teach classes and run labs. It was these experiences that first introduced me to teaching. Every week I found myself more excited to teach than I was to work in the lab. I soon realized that I had an aptitude and love of teaching and I decided after graduating to pursue teaching full time. I am now in my fifth year of teaching at Alpharetta High School. The work is incredibly rewarding and I could not be happier or more honored teaching these bright, young students every day. Go Raiders!

Personal Life

I met my wife in graduate school. We married in 2016 and have three beautiful children. We moved to Alpharetta in 2018 from Woodstock, GA. In my spare time I like playing video games (Halo), hiking, and playing competitive paintball. I have a fat lizard named Gus.