Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 6, 1992 TAG: 9203060276
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
One reason is that Murphy graduated 427th out of 430 in his class 14 years ago.
Today, he's president of a small company in Blacksburg, Fiber and Sensor Technologies Inc., that's making products based on his inventions.
He has 11 patents. Soon he will have a doctoral degree from Virginia Tech.
Murphy, 32, recently received the International Society for Optical Engineering's Meritorious Contribution award for his work last year in "smart materials" using fiber optics.
This from a guy whose father "had given up on me" and whose junior-year guidance counselor told him, "I should face it, I wasn't college material."
Engineers who worked back then at ITT Electro-Optical Products Division in Roanoke remember Murphy as the kid who emptied their trash cans.
With recent layoffs at the company that has since bought the ITT division, Alcatel Cable Systems, it's conceivable some of them might end up working for him.
Since his lackluster high school days, Murphy has been a successful student at Virginia Tech, earning a masters degree and heading for a doctorate.
He credits his turnaround to fortuitous encounters and a high school algebra teacher who insisted - shortly before Murphy flunked the class - that he could do anything he set his mind to.
In Ken Weddle's class, "I had no idea what I wanted to do" or what algebra was for, he said.
The first encounter was actually a collision with a football player who broke Murphy's collar bone while tackling him on a kickoff return.
"That's probably the best thing that ever happened to me," Murphy said.
The injury foiled his plan to work at a construction site. Instead he took a lower-paying job as a technician at ITT, where he had worked nights all through high school as a custodian for his father's janitorial company.
"My life kind of turns into one accident after another," Murphy said in an interview at his suburban Roanoke home.
ITT put him to work "polishing pieces of glass. I had no idea what they were."
He began asking questions. They were fiber-optic cables, hair-thin hollow rods that transmit digital information. ITT was trying to find practical applications for the emerging technology.
He began making suggestions. In 1980, he applied for his first patent - a method for connecting more than two fibers together that is now the industry standard.
"He had good lab skills and good aptitude," said Fred McDuffie, who later left ITT to work at Sumitomo Electric Fiber Optics Corp. in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. "He wasn't afraid to try things."
But Murphy said he was afraid of college, where McDuffie urged him to seek a degree in electrical engineering. He had a D average in a few classes he took at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke in 1979.
"I didn't even know what an engineer was," he said. "I still figured on eventually being a construction worker."
He subsequently enrolled again in night school at Virginia Western and, after three years of studying and working full time, "got up to college level." His father agreed to help pay for his tuition at Tech.
"I happened to take a class Richard Claus was teaching," he said.
Claus was setting up a fiber-optics laboratory in the basement of a classroom building and hired Murphy and four other students.
In 1986, the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology established the Fiber & Electro-Optics Research Center at Tech and named Claus the director.
Claus kept Murphy on and urged him to get his master's degree and doctorate.
"He changed my life too," Murphy said.
In August, he will be Dr. Murphy, co-author of more than 100 articles in scholarly publications and author of several chapters on fiber optics in upcoming textbooks.
Asked if he remembered anything about a student in 1977 named Kent Murphy, Weddle, the algebra teacher, said at first, "I can't place him."
After getting an update on his success, Weddle said, "Oh yeah, I remember now. He did have that Thomas Edison look, come to think of it. Long hair, good in science but bad in math - like Edison."
by CNB