Doctor Murphy, a graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine, has focused his career on the development of academic dermatopathology in his role as director of dermatopathology programs at the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson University, and Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital. For the past four editions, he has been the lead author of the chapter, "The Skin" in Robbins' Pathologic Basis of Disease.

His work in the area of neuropeptide regulation of Langerhans cell function was recognized as one of the 50 most significant scientific breakthroughs worldwide for the year 1993 by Discover magazine. His most recent collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Markus Frank of Boston's Children's Hospital has fostered the first biomarker identification and therapeutically relevant targeting of melanoma stem cells (January 2008 cover story, Nature).

Doctor Murphy, as Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, serves as the Chief of the BWH Program in Dermatopathology, which combines expanded diagnostic and didactic services with complementary NIH-funded research laboratories. He is the Director of both the Tissue and Cell Analysis Core for the Harvard Skin Disease Research Center (SDRC) and the Biospecimen Access and Analysis Core for the Harvard Specialized Program for Research Excellence (SPORE) in skin cancer.