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Image of Robin MurphyDr. Robin Murphy, Raytheon Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been named one of the 30 Most Innovative Women Professors Alive Today by The Best Master’s Degrees, a website that provides reviews and rankings to help narrow down the field when it comes to selecting which programs to pursue in higher education.

The female professors on this list are some of the most impressive and innovative in the United States. They have been chosen and ranked based upon their individual successes in their respective fields, including politics, robotics, mechanical engineering, literature, and law, to name but a few. 

Each woman on the list embodies the term “innovative” as defined as something “featuring new methods”. Among the 30 women honored with this recognition, three are involved in researching and developing robotics. Murphy is the only woman recognized from Texas A&M.

Murphy is director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Center for Emergency Informatics, which includes the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M. CRASAR is one of only two centers in the world specializing in disaster robotics. She established the field of disaster robotics in 1995 alongside Dr. Satoshi Tadokoro of the International Rescue Systems Institute at Tohoku University.

Along with directing CRASAR, Murphy also founded Roboticists Without Borders, a program designed to bring together groups of professionals in ground, aerial, or marine robots or emergency response to aid in the recovery after an incident occurs at no cost to responders and agencies.

As stated in her TEDWomen talk in May 2015, “If you can reduce the initial response by one day, you can reduce the overall recovery by 1,000 days or three years.” She works tirelessly to reach her ultimate goal of saving lives with robotics.

Among her numerous awards, Murphy recently received the Association for Computing Machinery Eugene Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics.

Beyond innovative research, Murphy has employed innovative means of engaging students and the public. She created robot petting zoos, which have been held at South by Southwest and other venues, introducing robots to over 5,000 participants. She has a blog and a new book, Robotics Through Science Fiction, which uses classic science fiction stories to explain robotics.

Her research interests include human-robot interaction, heterogeneous teams, victim management, perceptual directed behavior-based control and artificial intelligence as applied to emergency informatics and research, especially with tactical land, sea and air vehicles.