ARLINGTON, VA — Jim Murphy has joined Crown Innovations as a Senior Integration Engineer. In this role, Murphy will initially focus on integrating partners into the environment being developed at NASA for the testing of urban air mobility (UAM) airspace concepts. He will also leverage his systems engineering background to facilitate advancements in aviation and airspace integration for all Crown’s clients.
“Jim brings a unique wealth of senior-level aviation technical knowledge for UAS integration, simulation and flight testing, and air traffic management. He will add important expertise to assist both our state and federal programs in identifying gaps and providing cost-effective solutions to pressing needs as the advanced air mobility (AAM) and uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) industry integration tempo continues to accelerate,” said Al Khan, President & CEO of Crown Innovations. “Jim’s expertise will help us to guide our clients on developing systems architectures necessary to successfully build the foundation for emerging aviation and to understand the infrastructure requirements essential to enable UAS and AAM operations at scale. We are thrilled to have him join our Crown Team.”
Murphy has 30-plus years of experience in airspace management research and development. While at NASA, he led efforts to utilize model-based systems engineering approaches in aerospace research and the development of flight test environments for UAS aircraft. He also managed the development of software programs designed to research advanced air traffic management decision support tools.
In his early career, he stood up a distributed Live, Virtual, Constructive (LVC) test environment to streamline the transition between in-lab virtual simulations and live flight test encounters between live and virtual aircraft. This LVC test environment enabled facilities across all four NASA aeronautics centers to effectively collaborate in the development of UAS command and control and detect and avoid standards.
At NASA, Murphy served five years as the AAM System Architect within the AAM Mission Integration Office. He served as NASA’s lead for organizing and capturing candidate system architectural requirements, providing a baseline for initial research into AAM concepts. He worked across industry, federal, state and local stakeholders to capture and organize candidate AAM architecture components, ensuring consistency and completeness of the overall system.
Murphy has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Western Michigan University and Michigan State University, respectively. In 2014, he was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work in the development of the LVC test environment. He is an AIAA Associate Fellow and is a past chair of the AIAA Software Technical Committee.
About Crown Innovations
Founded in 1989, Crown (www.crownci.com) applies engineering, information solutions, analytics, and infrastructure services to assist government and industry in enhancing performance and planning for future challenges. Specializing in the field of aviation, Crown brings a national reputation for forging practical systems and service solutions based on real-world perspectives. Crown supports federal agencies, state and local governments, and commercial clients in adopting emerging aviation and air traffic technologies.