Credit: Nick Romanenko

Crawford's diverse background includes an undergraduate degree in English literature, (with a physics minor) and a master’s in English literature and education. She earned her Ph.D. in library and information science before becoming associate dean at Rutgers’ School of Engineering.

Holly Crawford’s gift is to observe the academic universe and discern the links among scientists, economists, historians, linguists, and even artists that cut across departmental boundaries. Her mission then is to forge eclectic partnerships that succeed as grant-winning research teams.

“My goal is to be a magnet for research money, to bring multidisciplinary teams together,” said Crawford, the recently appointed associate dean for research at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, who likens herself to “a marriage broker” of people, ideas, and academic disciplines.

Increasingly, grant-funding organizations, such as the National Science Foundation, reward researchers whose projects are interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial, and globally minded in scope, she says, while demonstrating that they are able to assess their programs – and their outcomes.

One current grant-winning team unites faculty from computer and information science, marine and coastal sciences, and engineering, among other disciplines, in the programming of marine gliders that “fly” through the Atlantic Ocean equipped with sensors to measure aspects of water quality such as salinity and temperature. The team – which includes collaborators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among other universities – writes software to guide the gliders based on biologically inspired behaviors, such as swarming.

“What we hope is that if one of the gliders senses something of import, such as a significant change in temperature or pollution, it will transmit this information to other gliders that will then join it in a swarm to collect massive amounts of data, and transmit those data in real time,” she explains.

Crawford’s diverse background helped shape her open-minded approach. She earned an undergraduate degree in English literature, specializing in the American colonial period, while minoring in physics. She then conducted equity research for a major financial services company before returning to school to earn a master’s degree in English literature and education, with the idea of teaching high school. But her interest in science, and especially in the way information is managed in the digital age, prompted her to pursue a Ph.D. in library and information science, which drew her to academia. She spent several years prior to her current post as an associate dean at Rutgers’ School of Engineering.

“I think what makes me unique is the combination of my education, my academic experience, and my work in the real world, which allows me to contribute creatively to a wide variety of research endeavors,” she says. “It also allows me to bring together seemingly disparate ideas or teams of people to solve certain research problems or collaborate on multidisciplinary grants.”

Another new project found its inspiration off campus, in the city of New Brunswick, where a large community of immigrants from Oaxaca – one of Mexico’s poorest, most rural provinces – caught the attention of researchers and helped cement ties between Rutgers and the region’s new land-grant university, the Oaxaca University System. Several faculty members, ranging from plant biologists to human ecologists, were eager to pursue grants to support exchanges between the two institutions.

“I suggested we convene a working group of faculty members from my unit and Latin American studies, and then hold a summit that also would include Oaxaca University faculty, Oaxacan leaders from the local community, and staff from the Mexican consulate, to create a framework for faculty and student exchanges. We will hold the summit in conjunction with the Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday,” Crawford says. The team meets regularly to collaborate on grants to support the partnership.

“We’re always looking for intellectual exchanges and trying to identify new collaborators,” she notes. She also encourages her undergraduate students to take advantage of these opportunities to travel and to present their research abroad. “There is such a need for thinking globally now, that to have a really well-rounded education you need to be a citizen of the world. You need to understand other cultures and to speak many languages.”

Crawford’s post was created earlier this year to expand the research funding base of the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. One of her jobs is to encourage her colleagues to think more creatively and proactively about grants by working on applications that have due dates far in the future. She imposes discipline with a gentle touch, however.

“I’ve been online since 1977, and while I appreciate the convenience of remote communication, I find that my colleagues and I collaborate more effectively when we get together in the same room,” Crawford says, noting that she adds the inducement of refreshments to enhance the collegiality of these meetings. “I tend to use the phrase ‘cake will be served’ when I write to colleagues asking them to join me for a grant meeting.” Crawford is particularly enthusiastic about her unit’s “human-centered approach” to even the most technical scientific problems.

“Everything that we do here at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station ties into the critical problems facing humankind today – climate change, shrinking water resources, and the need for alternative fuels and sustainable practices,” she says. “It has been a long and unusual journey for me to get here, but it has been worth it. Plus, it’s a great deal of fun. I laugh every day.”

In addition to her duties as dean, Crawford is an associate research professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, and plans to teach a new management course in strategic intelligence next year that will “pull theories from the military and apply them to business situations.” She also collaborates on research projects with colleagues such as Dimitris Metaxas, director of the Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling.