Holly Crawford Named Associate Dean for Research at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences

New Brunswick, NJ--Dr. Holly Crawford has been appointed associate dean for research in the Office of the Executive Dean at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. She will head the new Office of the Associate Dean for Research (OADR) which will serve as an essential resource to expand the research funding base of the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. Crawford will also hold an appointment as an associate research professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at the school.

“The principal mission of the newly formed Office of the Associate Dean for Research will be to increase the visibility of school and experiment station researchers and to help position them strategically to take full advantage of all large-scale, multidisciplinary funding opportunities,” said Robert M. Goodman, executive dean of agriculture and natural resources. “With her exceptional grants history and extensive network of contacts at federal funding agencies and in the private sector, Holly is a welcome and valuable addition to our leadership team. I look forward to seeing our school and experiment station benefit from her expertise and experience.”

The OADR will provide grantsmanship training and consultation, disseminate relevant and timely information about funding opportunities and agency programmatic initiatives, sponsor research-focused events, suggest potential internal and external collaborations, prepare researchers for funding agency meetings, and contribute content on an as-needed basis. In order to marshal unit and university resources effectively to provide the greatest impact, the OADR will coordinate closely with the Office of Communications, the Development Office, the experiment station’s director of research, the school’s dean of academic programs and research, the school’s dean for international programs and research, and the Rutgers University Foundation.

Crawford previously served for five years as an associate dean at the Rutgers School of Engineering, with visiting professor appointments in Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer and Information Science. Since January 2007, she has been a research fellow in Rutgers’ Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling.

Crawford, who holds a Ph.D. in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, has considerable experience as a consultant to industry groups, particularly in the areas of information technology and competitive intelligence. She has an impressive multidisciplinary grants track record that spans 20 years with funding from federal, state, and private sectors.