Dr. Murkin is currently full Senate Professor of Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine and Director of Cardiac Anesthesia. His most recent ongoing peer-funded investigations focus on both the role of near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for assessment of cerebral oxygenation, as well as novel investigations on the impact of early sepsis on NIRS-detected microcirculatory vasoreactivity and tissue oxygenation.

For over 3 decades, Dr. Murkin’s studies have focused on cognitive and neurological outcomes in cardiac surgery. Following his initial series of studies investigating cerebral blood flow and cerebral metabolism during cardiopulmonary bypass employing differing pH management strategies, and which established the primacy of alpha-stat during adult moderate hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), these studies also demonstrated the role of cerebral emboli in the genesis of postoperative neurological and cognitive impairment. Dr. Murkin is principal author of 2 Consensus Statements on parameters for cognitive testing after cardiac surgery and was co-founder of the international multidisciplinary meeting dealing with brain injury after cardiac surgery, ‘Outcomes’, held annually for 13 years in Key West and Barbados BWI, proceedings from which were published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery and subsequently in Heart Surgery Forum.

Dr. Murkin has been an invited discussant at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) symposium for perspectives on cardiothoracic research initiatives, and was subsequently invited to National Heart Lung and Blood Institute as member of the Protocol Review Committee to assess funding priorities for cardiac surgical studies. More recently, he has also become an invited participant in the NIH panel assessing grant proposals investigating therapeutic strategies in traumatic brain injury. Dr. Murkin has also been a panelist on the 2013 American Heart Association Emerging Science Series webcast on pediatric cerebral autoregulation during CPB.

A recipient of multiple Medical Research Council of Canada and Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation research grants, Dr. Murkin has authored more than 125 peer-reviewed papers, 15 book chapters and 130 scientific abstracts.

Dr. Murkin has also been Guest Editor of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery and is an external reviewer for Circulation, The Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Anesthesia and Analgesia, The Canadian Journal of Anesthesia, British Journal of Anaesthesia and Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandica among others.

Dr. Murkin's current investigations and interests focus on non-invasive technologies for monitoring neurovascular integrity during surgery and involve not only NIRS-based modalities but are currently encompassing somatosensory evoked potentials as an automated detection system for peripheral nerve injury.

Dr. Murkin won the 2018 Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society Critical Care Medicine Award, for his paper "Initial Soft Tissue Oxygenation is Inversely Associated With Prolonged ICU Admission".