Todd Martinez is a theoretical chemist who seeks to explain and predict complex chemical reactions based on the quantum mechanical properties of the atoms involved in the reaction. His work focuses on describing molecules at excited states, where conventional ground state electronic structure calculations are inadequate to capture the nature of their chemical reactivity. Todd Martinez received a B.S. (1989) from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a Ph.D. (1994) from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the Fritz Haber Institute for Molecular Dynamics in Jerusalem and a University of California Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA (1994-96). He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1996, where he is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and a faculty affiliate in the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Professor of Chemistry and Photon Science, Stanford University (2009-present)