Matthew Horton

Also known as Matthew K. Horton, Matthew Kristofer Horton, Matt Horton

Matthew Horton is a materials scientist and software engineer who helped create MatterGen, a generative AI model for designing inorganic materials with target properties. After a PhD at Imperial College London on dislocations in semiconductors for LED lighting, he moved to Berkeley in 2016 on a Lindemann Fellowship. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he helped lead the Materials Project and was first author of Crystal Toolkit, a framework for materials science web apps. He later joined Microsoft Research AI for Science, where he was one of seven equal-contribution authors of MatterGen, published in Nature in January 2025; in May 2025, he joined the founding team of Periodic Labs. He now consults through Isotropy, LLC.

Now at: Isotropy, LLC
Works: 98
Citations: 4,388
h-index: 35
Badges: Founder
Bridge

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

By 2016

From Imperial to Berkeley

His PhD at Imperial College London studies dislocations in semiconductors for more energy-efficient LED lighting, and an EPSRC Doctoral Prize award lets him continue the work there. In 2016, he takes up a Lindemann Fellowship at Berkeley and researches solar energy materials at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
2019

Predicting magnetic order at scale

In Kristin Persson's research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he works on magnetocalorics and high-throughput materials discovery. In June 2019, he is first author of an automated workflow, built with the atomate code, that predicts the magnetic ground state of inorganic crystals; it correctly predicts a non-ferromagnetic ground state in 95% of 64 benchmark materials.
By 2020

Helping lead the Materials Project

As a staff developer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he helps lead the Materials Project, an open, academic effort to share high-quality materials data, and he also helps create matsci.org, a shared space for the computational materials science community. In September 2020, he gives a Missouri State University seminar titled "Democratizing Access to Materials Science with the Materials Project".
February 2023

The Crystal Toolkit framework

In February 2023, he is first author, with 23 coauthors, of Crystal Toolkit, an open-source framework for building web apps that view, analyze and transform crystal structures and other materials data. Crystal Toolkit powers the Materials Project website frontend.
December 2023–January 2025

MatterGen at Microsoft Research

After leaving Persson's group, he joins Microsoft Research AI for Science in Redmond, where he is a Senior Research SDE when the team announces MatterGen, a generative model for property-guided materials design, in December 2023. Nature publishes MatterGen in January 2025 with him among seven authors who contributed equally. Its structures are more than twice as likely to be new and stable as those of earlier generative models, and the team synthesizes one generated material whose measured property lands within 20% of its target.
May 2025

Founding team at Periodic Labs

In May 2025, he leaves Microsoft Research AI for Science and joins Periodic Labs as a founding team member, part of the startup's eight-person stealth team. The company is announced publicly in September 2025.
July 2025

A Materials Project perspective

In July 2025, he is first author of a Nature Materials Perspective on the Materials Project, which launched formally in 2011 and is used by more than 600,000 materials researchers. The article describes how the project's data platform and software ecosystem have shaped data-driven materials science.
As of October 2026

Consulting through Isotropy

He is a materials scientist and software engineer who consults through Isotropy, LLC. His former employers include Periodic Labs, Microsoft Research and Berkeley Lab.