Mark Miodownik is Professor of Materials and Society at UCL. He is committed to building a more materially aware society, co-founding the Institute of Making to reconnect people with the joy of stuff.
For Professor Mark Miodownik MBE, understanding materials is essential to understanding ourselves and the world around us.
We make stuff and stuff makes us. Whether it’s cities, clothes, electronics, or dentistry, we are reliant on materials and how we interact with them.
Mark’s work focuses on exploring why materials behave the way they do, how they shape our lives, and how we can design them better, from the atomic level to large-scale manufacturing processes.
His path into material science began abruptly when, as a teenager in London, he was stabbed with a razor blade. This experience left him wondering: “How can a tiny postage stamp piece of metal almost kill me?” That question began a lifelong obsession.
A renowned public voice, his popular TV programme, How It Works and bestselling book, Stuff Matters aim to widen access to materials science and democratise knowledge about materials and their use in our everyday lives. Mark has received several awards for his public engagement work, and, in May 2025, he was appointed Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement with Science.
He is also challenging a culture of disposability, reframing repair and reuse as a creative, rather than laborious process. In 2013, he co-founded UCL’s Institute of Making – a place open to all at UCL, to make, test, break, fix and remake things; from spoon carving and textile repair to 3D printing.
You can discover the world in the Institute of Making by making it and understanding how other people made it. If we want people to be part of the next generation of makers, you have to give people from all backgrounds and disciplines the practical opportunity to make stuff.
Before coming to UCL in 2012, Mark studied for his PhD at Oxford and worked in the US and at University College Dublin, before holding a lectureship at King’s College London. However, it was at UCL that he found his “spiritual home.”
When we proposed the Institute of Making to the UCL Dean of Engineering he really loved the idea, it’s the reason why my research team came to UCL really. It’s such a diverse and collaborative community. I feel very lucky to be here.
Mark’s eye is now firmly on the future, reimagining our roads, bridges and tunnels as living entities that will one day self-repair.
His infectious enthusiasm has encouraged thousands of researchers, readers and listeners to rethink our relationship with materials, and find the wonder in stuff.
Once you look through the world from a material perspective, you see it very differently. There really is no such thing as mundane or boring, it’s all marvellous and wondrous once you know its secrets.
