SEAS Dean Breaks Barriers

When Cherry A. Murray was applying to college, she says her older brother, then a physics graduate student at MIT, told her, “There’s no way you can succeed in physics, and definitely not at MIT.”

So she went to MIT. And majored in physics.

Today she is a world-renowned physicist, president of the American Physical Society, and the incoming Dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, a role she assumes at time of great financial turmoil for Harvard’s schools.

But colleagues say Murray’s take-charge attitude and experience in management at Bell Labs—where she served as a senior vice president while it was also experiencing budgetary woes—are strong qualifications for the challenge of building up the fledgling school in an era of restricted resources.

“She was very bold in the kind of things she would do,” says Bell colleague David J. Bishop. “She won’t shy away from a fight.”

Murray says she was drawn to Harvard in part with the aim of furthering the SEAS charge to provide its students with an interdisciplinary education, but adds she hopes to expand its reach to ensure all Harvard students graduate with a knowledge of science.

“By and large, people who come through Harvard end up being world leaders,” says Murray. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they understood technology?”

RISING THROUGH THE RANKS

When Murray arrived at MIT, she says she was one of only three women in her physics class out of approximately 100 students—but that didn’t faze her.

“At MIT you either hate it or you love it,” Murray says. “And I absolutely loved it.”

Murray took readily to the experimental demands of applied physics, completing her senior thesis studying excitations in superfluid helium with physics professor Thomas J. Greytak, a difficult project that involved building her own homemade helium fridge.

“The [parts] kept plugging up and there were several leaks and other excitements,” says Murray. “You actually had to make everything back in those days to do your experiments.”

After completing her senior thesis, Murray was accepted to several graduate schools, but stayed at MIT, because all the others seemed “sleepy.”

She continued working with Greytak on a surface physics experiment that required her to spend hours welding in the machine shop building a vacuum system.

When she received an IBM Fellowship midway through her thesis work, she says she walked into Greytak’s office to ask if she should take the unorthodox step of interrupting her academic career for an internship in industry.

“His reaction was kind of interesting,” Murray says. “He fell off his chair, and I thought, ‘Oh well, never mind that.’”

But the next day, she says Greytak came to her office and told her she should intern at the prestigious Bell Labs, where he had done research as an undergraduate.

The experience resulted in her joining Bell Labs as a member of the technical staff after she received her doctorate.

“Bell Labs was a unique phenomenon in the history of science,” says Federico Capasso, a professor of applied physics at SEAS who was at Bell Labs with Murray. “You were working at the frontier of science and technology—it was a whirlwind of innovation and invention.”

In an environment she describes as simultaneously competitive and collaborative, Murray rose to become the Senior Vice President of Physical Sciences, one of the highest positions held by a woman at Bell Labs.

“I have certainly been extremely lucky in my career in that I don’t feel like I have been hampered tremendously,” Murray says. “Obviously there is unconscious gender bias in this society, so of course I’m affected by that.”

But while vice president, she says her division’s budget and staff were slashed amid multiple reorganizations of the Labs, taking a significant toll on physical sciences research there.

Bishop credits Murray with working tirelessly to rebuild Bell’s physical sciences division.

“She is extremely effective both as a scientist but also as a scientific leader,” says Bishop. “The folks at Harvard are lucky to get someone like her.”

Murray’s drive was not lost on another director at Bell—SEAS founding Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti.

“He was head of materials science and was trying to recruit me, but I went into physics instead,” Murray says.

But though Venky, who remains a professor of engineering and applied sciences at SEAS, failed to convince Murray to join his specialty, he did manage to help get Murray to join his school, where she appears poised to continue his interdisciplinary vision for SEAS.

PHYSICS FOR ALL

Murray says she was attracted to SEAS by its interdisciplinary nature and focus on applied science—while always keeping the question “Why am I doing this?” in mind.

“We have some serious problems that Harvard can address, including global health, clean energy technologies, figuring out what is happening to the climate system and the planet, and finding economic security,” Murray says. “In all of those areas, SEAS is absolutely perfect for Harvard to have a major impact.”

Echoing Venky’s vision, Murray says she believes that we can only solve these problems through interdisciplinary learning and by educating leaders who can understand science.

She says she will continue to develop the Technology, Science and Society concentration and the Bioengineering concentration for undergraduates as well as work to establish connections with Harvard’s other schools.

“We have all these horizontal interactions between SEAS and systems biology and the Medical School, and I think she’ll be great in establishing bridges,” says Capasso.

Colleagues say her experience as both an experimentalist and as a manager is the right combination for leading SEAS.

“She is able to look at both the big picture and at details, and that’s not a common thing,” says Capasso. “She has this impressive management experience. We need someone who has both the vision but also knows how to run things.”

—Staff writer Alissa M. D’Gama can be reached at adgama@fas.harvard.edu.