Professor Martin is Professor of Rehabilitation and Director of the Centre for Rehabilitation, Lifestyle Medicine, and Human Performance. He graduated from the University of Ulster in 1988 with a BSc (Hons) Physiotherapy. He was awarded his DPhil from the University of Ulster in 1993 and received an MSc Applied Statistics from Napier University in 2000.

Before coming to Teesside in 2006 he was a Principal Research Fellow in the Centre for Health and Social Care Research at Sheffield Hallam University. Before that, Professor Martin was a Director of the Scottish Network for Chronic Pain Research and Award Coordinator of the MSc Pain at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. During his time in Scotland, he also served as Chair of Pain Association Scotland and Vice-chair of the Scottish Parliament Cross Party Group on Chronic Pain.

Professor Martin is an experienced supervisor of postgraduate degrees with 28 doctoral completions. He is Vice Chair of the XR4Rehab Network and leads the Integrating Physical Health, Mental Health, and Social Care theme in the ARC NENC.

Professor Martin’s research interests lie in assessing and managing the impact of pain and disability, in which he has published widely and led or collaborated on many projects. These projects have an accumulated vale of external funding over £25m from bodies including the EU, Research Councils, NIHR, the National Lotteries Charities Board, the Chief Scientist Office in Scotland, the Health Foundation, and other charities. 

He has a particular interest in the application of XR and other digital technologies to augment rehabilitation and is an Associate Partner in the EU NWE Interreg funded Scale-Up4Rehab project to facilitate development, research and and implementation of XR technologies.