Hometown: Toledo, OH
Graduating Class: 1988
Career Overview: Patrick Murray started as a co-op student at Intel Corporation while at NC State and was hired full-time upon graduation. His roles over the following 28 years included working as an applications engineer, managing several strategy and product planning teams, creating and managing Intel’s Global ISV Alliances Team, and at the end of his career, managed Intel’s WW Retail Sales Development Team.
- What is the single most important experience or understanding you gained in the ISE department? The value of working through the whole process of solving a problem. Every part of the “journey” is important, not only the solution itself. Along the way, one will experience mistakes or setbacks that can be informative for future experiences; plus, one may also discover ideas that can be used to solve other related problems.
- What is the most pressing issue facing human society that engineers should be working harder to solve? Proactively working with and informing thought leaders and government agents on possible unintended consequences of emerging technologies to better shape policies around their uses. Too often, we can get enamored with the positive benefits of new technologies to solve problems, so our energy is focused at bringing those benefits to our community and world; energy and thoughtfulness should also be applied to thinking about, discovering and gameplaying how those technologies can be harmful, and then providing those insights to those who shape policies.
- What would you like to accomplish in your career? What are you most proud of so far? I retired in 2016 and felt more than satisfied with what I accomplished after working for 30 years at Intel Corporation.
- If you were not in the engineering field, what would you likely be doing? I can’t remember a time when I hadn’t thought about being some sort of engineer. I would like to think that I would have been a teacher, as I’ve always enjoyed helping people figure things out and learn new things.
- What advice do you have for current ISE students? Use your time and experiences to discover what types of problems you love to solve.