Professor Murphy’s doctoral research focused on observational and theoretical aspects of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). She has since worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research. Her research interests include: the analysis, interpretation, and modeling of X-ray data; Monte Carlo and numerical simulations of transmission and reflection (Compton scattering) in obscuring matter in AGN; the construction of spectral fitting routines using Monte Carlo simulations to model the putative torus in AGN; and numerical analyses of photons in Kerr metric to investigate observational measures of black-hole spin and emission line diagnostics