Dame Fiona Murray

Professor Dame Fiona Murray CBE DCMG is the Associate Dean of Innovation at the MIT School of Management and William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship. She received her BA ’89 and MA ‘90 from the University of Oxford in chemistry. She subsequently earned a PhD from Harvard University in applied sciences.

Her research, teaching and professional activities focus on the intersection of critical technologies, entrepreneurship and geopolitics. She is a leader in shaping innovation ecosystems and their stakeholders to drive the formation and scaling of deep tech ventures that solve global challenges - notably in defense, security, and resilience. She also emphasizes how high-performing organizations - in the public and private sectors - engage with these innovation ecosystems to support their strategic innovation priorities.

Murray has a special interest in the funding of science from the university bench to impact at scale - building different types of capital vehicles that support prosperity and wider national priorities. More recently, she has explored how the changing geopolitical environment is shaping risk capital, critical technology and startups. Her research has been published in a wide variety of academic journals and more popular press including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review. She is also an associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Fiona has served on the British Prime Minister’s Council on Science and Technology and was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) in the 2023 by His Majesty King Charles III for services to science, technology, and diversity. She is the Vice Chair of the NATO Innovation Fund - the first multi-sovereign venture fund to support deep tech ventures with a defence, security and resilience focus across Allied nations - and is a member of the UK Ministry of Defence Innovation Advisory Panel. In the United States, Murray also sits on a number of boards, including Prime Coalition, a not-for-profit creating a new venture fund with catalytic capital to support start-ups focused on climate security.