MARTECH's mission is to provide opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to become excellent scientists and engineers by doing leading-edge research in materials science and associated technologies.   This is accomplished by supporting interdisciplinary collaborations among many world-class scientists and engineers at FSU, other Universities, and industries; by aggressively pursuing external funding for projects supporting student's research; by maintaining an evolving infrastructure of measurement facilities addressing these researchers' needs; and by providing mechanisms for interactions with other leaders in the field.

MARTECH was founded in 1986 by the Florida legislature as an interdisciplinary center for education and research in materials science.   New faculty members were hired in physics, chemistry, and engineering.   Currently, materials science research in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering is supported within MARTECH.   Support includes competitive graduate assistantships, technical personnel and instrumentation infrastructure, contract and grant management, and regular seminars.   Present active research projects include studies of magnetic nanoparticles, transport and magnetotransport in low dimensions, liquid crystals, biomolecular manipulation, surface physics and chemistry, strongly correlated fluid and electron systems, and photo and polymer chemistry.   Martech also supports the Integrated Nanoscience Institute, (INSI) an interdisciplinary initiative to foster a world-class program in bio-nanoscience through research on the fundamental nanoscale phenomena and processes required to integrate hard (metals and semiconductors) and soft (organic and biological) materials and put these hybrids to practical use.

In addition to these research activities, MARTECH is a leading educational and support resource for the local research community, sharing its analytic instrumentation, technical support staff, and knowledge base.  The Tallahassee, Florida, area is home to not only Florida State University (FSU), but also Florida A & M University (FAMU) and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL), which is itself a multidisciplinary, multi-user facility providing research support to both academia and industry.