Murphy began research into disaster robotics in 1995, motivated by the Oklahoma City bombing. Murphy was the director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASASR) from 2002 to 2018, and now serves as the vice-president. Through CRASAR she participated in the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster (2001), considered the first use of robots for the emergency response phase of a disaster. Since then she has helped insert unmanned ground, aerial, and marine systems into 27 disasters including Hurricane Katrina, which is considered the first use of small unmanned aerial systems, the Fukishima Daiichi nuclear accident (2011), the Tōhoku tsunami (2011), the Syrian Boat Refugee crisis (2016), and Hurricane Harvey (2017). She wrote the seminal text Disaster Robotics, MIT Press, in 2014.