Kevin Murphy
Acting NASA Chief Data Officer/Chief AI Officer and Chief Science Data Officer, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate
Kevin Murphy serves as NASA’s acting chief data officer, acting chief artificial intelligence officer, and the chief science data officer for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He also leads the agency’s High End Computing Capability Portfolio.
As acting chief data officer and chief artificial intelligence officer, Murphy provides strategic leadership to the agency’s application and use of data and AI at a critical juncture where demand and adoption are rapidly increasing. He works to align NASA’s AI strategy with enterprise data governance to ensure responsible, transparent, and secure development, deployment, and risk management across the agency.
As the chief science data officer, Murphy works across NASA’s five science divisions to advance artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and data science for the agency’s scientific data. He oversees the strategic planning and implementation of NASA’s data and computing ecosystem, including high-end computing and cloud resources, ensuring these critical capabilities are efficient, reliable, and aligned with mission priorities. This stewardship enables gold standard, reproducible science while also supporting mission-critical engineering, modeling, and analysis activities across the agency for programs such as Artemis and future Moon-to-Mars exploration. Murphy’s leadership ensures NASA’s scientific data remain openly accessible and preserved for long-term discovery and innovation.
Previously, Murphy managed the data systems programs responsible for the production and distribution of data from NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites to users around the world. He initiated the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program and led the Satellite Needs Assessment Working Group. During his tenure at the Goddard Space Flight Center, he developed and managed projects including near real-time science data production systems, search engines, scientific data visualization systems, and earthdata.nasa.gov.
Murphy’s leadership has been recognized with numerous awards, including the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement for Engineering, Charles S. Falkenberg Award, and Fed 100, and the 2025 AGU Open Science Group Award among others.
He holds a master’s degree in Geographic Sciences and has completed coursework for a doctorate in Geology from the University of Maryland.