Another week, another top professor leaving the state.

The University of South Florida is losing bragging rights to internationally renowned robotics researcher Robin Murphy, who gained notoriety when she deployed her search-and-rescue robots at the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster and then more recently in the Utah mine disaster.

She is resigning at the end of the summer to take a post at Texas A&M University.

"I hope that the faculty will think of my move as creating a new partner for those multi-institutional grants and that we will continue to work together to create technology to save lives," she wrote in her June 19 resignation letter.

For USF, a research university trying to boost its national profile, the departure is a painful reminder of how hard it’s becoming to keep the best faculty in the state university system. Florida State and the University of Florida, the other two major public research institutions, also are losing dozens of faculty and administrators.

They’re headed to universities in states like North Carolina that do not suffer the same financial and political uncertainties as Florida — where lawmakers facing revenue shortfalls have cut tens of millions of dollars from colleges’ rolls in the past year.