Follow Us 
Current Poll
| From Spring Hill to Princeton |
 |
 |
 |
| News - Spring Hill | |||
| Written by Chase Jordan | |||
| Wednesday, 14 January 2009 08:00 | |||
 oleen Murphy, an assistant professor of genomics and molecular biology, has come a long way since she walked the halls of SHHS. In December, at the American Society for Cell Biology’s annual meeting in San Francisco, she was presented with the society’s Junior Career Recognition Award for research in the field of aging. Her work involved age-related memory loss and birth defects.“I’ve been pretty lucky and pretty driven all my life, but I think the only secret is to find something you love doing and do it as well as you can,” Murphy said. “I love my research and running my lab group, and even though it took years to get to this point, it was all worth it. I didn’t know what I would be doing later in life, so doing well in school is just a way of keeping all your options open.” Murphy moved to Spring Hill with her family when she was 4. After graduating from SHHS in 1987, Murphy earned a bachelor’s degree in science from the University of Houston and a Ph.D from Stanford University. She completed a postdoctoral stint at the University of California at San Francisco. Murphy’s parents, John and Connie Murphy, said she was always competitive and wanted to be number one. There was a time when she participated in gymnastics at the age of 9 and asked her father for a duffel bag so she could return with a huge trophy. Connie said she received first place. “She was destined to be at the top at whatever she set her mind to,” John said. “We’re very proud of her accomplishments.” Her mother agreed. “She has endless confidence,” Connie said. Murphy practiced gymnastics until the age of 16. She wanted to allow more time for other activities, including track and piano. In college, she participated with a cycling team and did triathlons. Her hobbies in graduate school included soccer and ultimate frisbee. Murphy thanks her parents for her success. “I think my parents were really important in instilling a love of education in me, and I must have inherited my work ethic and competitive drive from them, so they are really responsible in a lot ways for my success,” she said. Murphy was designated as a New Innovator by the Director of the National Institutes of Health and as a “Scientist to Watch” by the The Scientist, a scientific journal. She has plans to accomplish more in the future. “Mostly to publish our papers — my students have done a lot of work, and now we’re ready to get the work out to the scientific public,” Murphy said. “I also have some new students joining the lab who are going to build robots to mechanize some of our more tedious experimental protocols, which should be fun.” In 2008, some of her other accomplishments included being named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, an Ellison Medical Foundation Scholar, a McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience Scholar, and a March of Dimes Basil O’Conner Starting Scholar. Murphy said she faces several challenges in her field of research including coming up with new research. She also said that funding is another challenge because its been getting tighter over the years, which becomes stressful for researchers. “My hope is that the new administration will be friendlier to scientists than the last one was, and thus far Obama really looks promising, very science friendly,” Murphy said. “The economy affects both federal and private funding, so funding will be a challenge for scientists in a lot of areas.” Murphy lives in Princeton, N.J. with her husband Dr. Zemer Gitai and their 1-year-old son, Benjamin. Zemer is also a scientist and faculty member in the molecular biology department. “It’s great having a spouse who understands both my work and why it’s important to me,” Murphy said. “Benjamin doesn’t do science yet — we mostly talk about what doggies and cows and ducks say at this point.”
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 581 Trackback(0)
Comments (0)
 Write comment
You must be logged in to post a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.
|
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
