Rate My Professor Ryan Murphy

Dr. Ryan Murphy is a Lecturer in the School of Mathematical Sciences within the College of Sciences at Adelaide University. He holds a Master of Mathematics (M.Math.) from the University of Oxford, obtained in 2015, and a PhD from Queensland University of Technology, completed in 2022. His professional career began as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte in the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2018. Following his PhD, he served as an Associate Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Mathematical Biology at Queensland University of Technology from 2022 to 2023. From 2023 to 2025, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Multiscale Mathematical Modelling of Cell Biology at the University of Melbourne. Since 2025, he has held his current position as Lecturer at Adelaide University. Murphy is eligible to supervise Masters and PhD students as a co-supervisor and currently co-supervises doctoral projects including data-driven mathematical modelling of nanoparticles in biomedicine, mathematical modelling of the extracellular actin scavenging system, and biofilm growth and cell death.

Murphy's research lies at the interface of applied mathematics, statistics, and biology. He develops discrete models such as systems of ordinary differential equations and stochastic agent-based models, alongside continuum models involving nonlinear partial differential equations, applying techniques like travelling wave analysis, perturbation analysis, and moving boundary problems to biologically motivated processes. His statistical expertise includes uncertainty analysis, parameter estimation and identifiability, profile likelihood-based methods, Bayesian MCMC, and approximate Bayesian computation. Biological applications encompass epithelial tissue dynamics (mechanical cellular relaxation, proliferation, death, competition, mechanochemical feedback), avascular tumour growth (experimental design, co-culture, adaptation to oxygen), epithelial-mesenchymal transitions, cell cycle, population dynamics, and nanoparticle-cell interactions. Notable publications include 'A Cautionary Tale of Model Misspecification and Identifiability' (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 2026, with Browning and Flegg), 'Quantifying biological heterogeneity in nano-engineered particle-cell interaction experiments' (Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 2025, with Faria, Osborne, and Johnston), 'Mechanical cell interactions on curved interfaces' (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 2025, with Buenzli and Simpson), 'Formation and growth of co-culture tumour spheroids: new compartment-based mathematical models and experiments' (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 2024, lead author), and 'Growth and adaptation mechanisms of tumour spheroids with time-dependent oxygen availability' (PLoS Computational Biology, 2023). He serves as Associate Editor for Bulletin of Mathematical Biology since 2025, Member of the Society of Mathematical Biology Newsletter Publication Board since 2025, and has taught Linear Algebra (MATH 1056) and Topics in Mathematics 2 (MATH 3041) in 2025.