Dr. Robin R. Murphy, Raytheon Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University and director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), was named one of the 2011 Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company.
CRASAR is a center within the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), which is a member of The Texas A&M University System.
Murphy was one of five women named in "The Brainiacs" category of the list. Other categories included "The Entrepreneurs," "The Gamers," "The Advocates," "The Media," and "The Executives." Fast Company began the list of Most Influential Women in Tech in 2009, and this year’s list highlights 30 women in the six different categories.
Murphy joined the faculty at Texas A&M in 2008 and is best known for her work with search and rescue robots which have been used in the rubble of the World Trade Center following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 as well as in mud slides, caved-in-mines and collapsed buildings around the world.
She has been honored with the 2010 Motohiro Kiosoi Award from the International Rescue System Institute for her outstanding academic contributions in establishing a new research field in rescue engineering.
Additionally, in 2009 she was named an Alpha Geek by Wired magazine, and in 2008 she was awarded the Al Aube Outstanding Contributor award by the AUVSI Foundation, the first time the award has been given to an academic. She was also profiled in the June 14, 2004 issue of Time magazine as an innovator in artificial intelligence.
Murphy received a B.M.E. in mechanical engineering, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Georgia Tech, where she was a Rockwell International Doctoral Fellow. Her basic research focuses on artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction for unmanned systems. These efforts are/have been funded by DoE (RIM), DARPA, ONR, NASA, NSF and industry, and have led to more than 100 publications in the field including the textbook AI Robotics (MIT Press).
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