Shawn D. Murphy

Shawn is an entrepreneur, inventor and technologist with over 25 years of experience in industries such as energy systems, oil and gas, aerospace, defense, IT security, semiconductors and consumer electronics.

During his career, Shawn founded four start-ups, including an eBook company in the ’90s that held the first Digital Rights Management (DRM) patent for internet subscription payments and a fabless semiconductor company that designed a pioneering hardware/software miniature anti-tamper system. In addition to multiple entrepreneurial endeavors, Shawn created an innovation engineering center for Royal Dutch Shell (Shell TechWorks) with the sole purpose of developing, testing, deploying and commercializing revolutionary technology. Prior to this role, Shawn was the Head of Earth and Space Science at Draper Laboratory where he led numerous missions such as LADEE and CYGNSS and deployed instruments and spacecraft for NASA.

With a knack for building world-class teams and organizations, Shawn has devoted his career to solving societal problems using an eclectic combination of science, systems thinking and philosophy that range from the micro- to the macro-scale. Among Shawn’s greatest accomplishments are the Phoenix 2 Lander, the ExoplanetSat nanosatellite technology demonstration mission and the confidential design, development and deployment of the Blowout Preventer following the failure of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill