Robert Murphy, M.D.

Murphy Headshot

Robert Murphy, MD is Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University where he is the founding Executive Director, Institute for Global Health and John P. Phair Professor of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Murphy’s primary research and clinical interest is in viral infections. His research focus includes drug development of new antiretroviral drugs and vaccines for HIV, other viruses and the scale-up of therapy for AIDS and its complications including tuberculosis and cancer in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Murphy was Country Director for the Harvard President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program at its inception in 2004. He is Principal Investigator for NIH-supported research training grants in Nigeria and Mali involving HIV-related malignancies and mycobacterial disease.  During the West African Ebola outbreak, he was the administrative director of the laboratory at University of Bamako in Mali where confirmatory molecular testing for Ebola was performed.  He is co-investigator on three Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) junior faculty development grants at the Universities of Jos, Ibadan and Lagos, in Nigeria, and Director of Extramural Programs in HIV and Tuberculosis at the University of Bamako in Mali.  Dr. Murphy has two NIH center grants involving epigenomics of common HIV-related cancers in Nigeria and another developing point-of-care devices and assays that can be used to treat, monitor or prevent HIV-associated conditions in Africa.  He is a member of the Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies (NEST) team supported by the MacArthur Foundation, which aims to reduce neonatal mortality in Africa by 50%.  He is a founding board member of the Northwestern Global Health Foundation and faculty director of the online Master of Science in Global Health graduate degree program through the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern.