Marin Kovačić was born in 1990 in Zagreb, where he attended primary school and the IV.  Gymnasium. In 2009, he enrolled in the undergraduate program in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, which he graduated in 2012. In the same year, he enrolled in the master's program in Chemical Engineering at the same Faculty, and graduated in 2012, earning the title of Master of Chemical Engineering (mag. ing. cheming.).

In January 2015, he was employed as an assistant at the Croatian Science Foundation on the research project "Environmental Implications of the Application of Nanomaterials in Water Purification Technologies" (UIP-11-2013-7900), led by Prof. Hrvoje Kušić, Ph.D., at the Department of Polymer Engineering and Organic Chemical Technology. His doctoral thesis, "Degradation of Pharmaceuticals in Water Using New Nanocomposite Photocatalysts Activated by Solar Radiation," was also supervised by Prof. Hrvoje Kušić, Ph.D. He defended his doctoral thesis in July 2018. From March 2019 to May 2024, he was employed as an assistant professor at the Dept. of Polymer Engineering and Technology at the Faculty. Since May 2024 he is employed as an associate professor.

He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his innovative work, which he has been actively engaged in since 2013, and in 2016 he was awarded the annual award of the Zagreb Community of Technical Culture "Dr. Oton Kučera" for promoting technical culture.

His scientific interests include photocatalytic water treatment, photocatalytic hydrogen production, the study of interactions between nano- and microplastics with environmental substances, and the investigation of nanomaterial properties using computational chemistry methods. He heas co-authored more than 43 peer-reviewed scientific papers and has been cited more than 640 times (Scopus).