Dr. Grit Martinez is a Senior Fellow at the Ecologic Institute and holds an adjunct research professorship in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Social Behavioral Research at the University of Maryland. With academic roots in the humanities and social sciences, her research focus lies on social processes leading to sustainable transformations in worldwide ecological systems.  Dr. Martinez works and publishes on behavioral insights and people-centered solutions for climate change adaptation, resilience, and their enabling and restricting cultural, political, economic and technical contexts. She also focuses on challenges of interdisciplinary collaborations amongst the social sciences, humanities and natural, engineering and life sciences. She is a native German speaker, with fluency in English and Spanish, and has a basic knowledge of French and Russian.

Dr. Martinez held a distinguished position in the research program of the German Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) "Managing Climate Change in the Regions for the Future", as scientific coordinator of the project RADOST (Regional Adaptation Strategies for the German Baltic Sea Coast). Through the implementation of climate adaptation measures in place-based contexts, the project illustrated social opportunities as innovative responses to the challenges of climatic change at Germany's coastal shores in 2009 already. During this time Dr. Grit Martinez served at the selection committee of the ministry's funding concept FONA "City of the Future – Climate Resilience in City and Regions" and contributed to the expert roundtable discussion of the German Future Earth Committee's Working Group "Societal resilience and climate extremes."

Within Germany's political environmental funding landscape she regularly leads projects for the BMFTR, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUV), e.g. "Blue Estuaries – Developing Estuaries as Habitable Sustainable Ecosystem Despite Climate Change and Stress" (BluEs), "The German North Sea and Baltic Sea over 100 Years Ago" (HISTOMAR), "Ecosystem-based Adaptation for Coastal Regions Worldwide" (TROPICAL ADAPT) and "50 Years of Environmental Programme. Historical analysis of German Environmental Policy since 1971".

Dr. Martinez has also led numerous work packages in research projects of the European Commission, for example in the 5th, 6th and 7th European Research Framework Programme for the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, for the Directorate-General for Climate Action, the Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme "BONUS", Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme, JPI Climate – Connecting climate knowledge for Europe as well as in the research framework programs Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.

Her EU-projects comprise e.g. "Supporting and standardizing climate services in Europe and beyond" (Climateurope2), "Innovation in Climate Service Provision" (INNOVA), "Reducing nutrient loadings from agricultural soils to the Baltic Sea via groundwaters and streams" (SOILS2SEA), "Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts – Tool Kit" (RISC-KIT), "Bottom Up Adaptation Strategies throughout Europe" (BASE) and "Environmental Technologies Training and Awareness-Raising in the Transport Sector" (ETTAR).

Dr. Martinez has considerable moderation experience and has facilitated numerous dialogues in the environmental science-policy arena.

She is a member of the faculty of Ecologic Institute at Duke University's Berlin program, where she teaches the course, "Environmental Policy in Europe." She is also a mentor for North American young professionals in the transatlantic program of the Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship Program, young climate experts from developing countries in the International Climate Protection Fellowships of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and for undergraduates in the Deans' Summer Research Fellowships of Duke University.