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Search-And-Rescue Expert Leaves USF

Associated Press file photo (2007)

Robin Murphy, left discusses a rescue robot at the Crandall Canyon Mine during attempts to locate six trapped miners northwest of Huntington Utah, Sunday, Aug, 26, 2007.

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By ADAM EMERSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 24, 2008

TAMPA - The University of South Florida is losing a high-profile faculty member to a Texas university that saw opportunity in Florida's economic misery.

Robin Murphy, whose search-and-rescue robots have scoured some of the nation's worst disaster sites including ground zero, is leaving USF in August for a job with Texas A&M University.

In doing so, Murphy joins dozens of her research colleagues at universities across Florida who are leaving the state for more stable and richer work environments.

Murphy, 50, said Monday that leaders at Texas A&M's computer science department began recruiting her last fall, about the time USF was forced to begin cutting back in Florida's darkening economy.

"All universities go through cycles when money is tight, but this is quite a bit more serious than I've ever seen," said Murphy, who joined USF in 1998.

She is taking a professorship at Texas A&M endowed by the Raytheon Co., a job that gives her access to a $54 million building used to test search-and-rescue technology.

USF, by contrast, has frozen hiring and cut 170 faculty positions as it struggles with the loss of $35.6 million in state money.

Things got so tight, she said, "I gave up the phone in my lab.

Murphy said her decision to leave USF was hard. The east Texas school, however, wasn't the only institution recruiting her. The University of South Carolina also pounced, knowing that budget cuts are making life hard for Florida instructors and researchers, she said.

USF leaders countered with their own offer to keep Murphy, whose name has been emblazoned in news headlines nationwide for her one-of-a-kind work with robot rescue technology.

Their offer, however, paled compared with Texas A&M's, said Dwayne Smith, USF's senior vice provost.

"We just don't have a lot of money to work with," Smith said.

Murphy earns $127,238 a year at USF, where she serves as director of the Institute for Safety Security Rescue Technology. Her salary at Texas A&M wasn't available Monday.

She and her search-and-rescue robots have been summoned to disasters worldwide. Her robots have aided in the rescue and recovery at ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks, surveyed storm-damaged communities in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina and descended in a collapsed Utah mine searching for lost coal miners.

Recently, Microsoft awarded her and a Stanford University colleague a $500,000 grant to create a "Survivor Buddy." Such a robot would act as a companion to a person who may be trapped in a crashed car or pinned in a building crushed after an earthquake.

With her skills, and her ability to nab tens of thousands in federal grants, USF claimed expertise in the field of advanced robotics, Smith said.

Now, administrators fear that headhunters will target the rest of her team at USF.

"We know there are some states that are just licking their chops to get at Florida faculty," Smith said.

Ten faculty members have resigned from USF in recent weeks, Smith said. All referred to the budget constraints on their work.

"I think we have to brace ourselves that there may be more," he said.

They aren't the only ones. Leaders at Florida State University, for instance, say they have lost 62 faculty members to higher paying jobs. Other schools are experiencing a similar drain.

Academic circles widely consider Florida to be worse off financially than other public university systems, Smith said.

Texas and North Carolina, in particular, are recruiting heavily in the Sunshine State.

For Murphy, the budget cuts come at the wrong time. "I am, dare I say, getting older," she said. "The next 10 years are getting critical for me."

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285 or aemerson@tampatrib.com.

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