Quin Murphy
Product Marketing Manager, Varian Medical Systems
Georgia Institute of Technology ‘19
Atlanta, Georgia
Growing up in Covington and starting to look at college, Quin knew that going a school in Georgia would be the best option for his future. “The HOPE Scholarship was awesome; it just takes so much stress off of school and paying for education. It was much more feasible to get through school and just focus on studying and not necessarily about paying for things or taking out an exorbitant amount of loans to get through it. I felt very lucky to be on the HOPE Scholarship at Georgia Tech...It was a no brainer for me.”
Interested in the medical field, Quin decided to major in biomedical engineering. He was able to complete several different internships that gave him experience in the biomedical field, including one in which he received a patent for a surgical stapler used for liver transplants.
“I always thought medical anything was cool. But I realized I just liked the idea of being a doctor, I didn’t actually want to be a doctor. I realized that you can still do a lot of cool things in the medical field. I got to see an open-heart surgery on an 81-year-old. Getting the patents is with surgical staplers is cool. One of my research projects was to create a new IV-line attachment that removes air bubbles.”
“I would say the number one thing that I learned from Georgia Tech and going through school, is how to fail and be wrong really early. And learning from my mistakes. For me, it was helpful to recognize that there is no easy win at Georgia Tech, no easy classes. So you learn what it takes to be successful. And a lot of those things correlate to the job that I’m in now and internships that I’ve had. It’s okay to fail, it’s okay to be wrong; you’ll figure out the right answer. That’s what I appreciate the most about Georgia Tech and what it instilled in me: is that you don’t get beaten down by being wrong and that you’re ultimately working towards solving a problem. Most problems don’t have a one or two sentence explanation.”
Quin now works as a product marketing manager for Interventional Oncology’s Software Solutions for Varian Medical Systems, helping to circulate tumor imaging software and radiation devices to cancer treatment facilities worldwide and assisting their teams in implementing these resources in their treatments.
“It’s a cool thing for me, as someone who wanted to be a doctor growing up, because I get to spend a lot of time with clinical professionals. We go on and visit these people who have dedicated their whole life to treating and caring for cancer patients. We get to bring them tools that make those treatments easier. I know the product, they know the clinical problems, and we work together.”
Quin lives in Atlanta and hopes to continue to work in the biomedical engineering field.