Dr. Martin S. Lawless earned his Ph.D. in acoustics from the Pennsylvania State University with a dissertation on using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the brain's auditory and reward response to reverberation in musical passages. His research interests broadly involve the human perception of sound, including areas of virtual acoustics, musical acoustics, architectural acoustics, noise, and neuroimaging. He received his B.E. in mechanical engineering from The Cooper Union.

As a visiting assistant professor at Cooper from 2018-2021, Dr. Lawless worked with students on a range of undergraduate and graduate projects involving machine learning for head-related transfer functions, active noise control in office settings, and passive noise attenuation in exhaust systems. In 2021, Dr. Lawless embarked to Paris, France, to become a postdoctoral researcher at the L'Institut Jean Le Rond ∂’Alembert at l'Université de la Sorbonne, where his research focused on the localization of real and virtual sound sources, as well as improving sound localization training in virtual reality. Although he left Paris in 2022, he has continued as a visiting researcher during summers. 

From 2022-2025, Dr. Lawless joined The State University of New York Maritime College as an assistant professor in mechanical engineering, where his research has expanded to undergraduate engineering education, specifically examining project-based learning and problem-solving strategies. Dr. Lawless has taught a broad range of courses including first-year engineering design, dynamics, thermodynamics, vibrations, heat transfer, experimentation, musical instrument design, and other acoustic electives. He is an active member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), serving as the chair of ASA's Member Engagement committee and organizer of two different mentorship programs for the professional organization. 

Outside of the classroom (though sometimes in it as well), Dr. Lawless can be found playing a variety of musical instruments, swing dancing, or baking bread.