Deb Crawford, Drexel Vice Provost for Research on evaluating cells a thousand times smaller than a human hair and more: Q&A
Debbie Crawford isn’t from around here.
The native of Glasgow, Scotland moved from Alexandria, VA to take the Vice Provost for Research gig at Drexel University in September and is awash in a continued University City renaissance that most Philadelphians from even five years ago wouldn’t recognize.
The engineer-by-training spent 20 years at the venerable National Science Foundation and is here to push forward Drexel’s reputation as a serious research institution.
“The tipping point for that is going from the individual cottage industry notion of research with deep expertise to a place where we are bringing the researcher across a variety of other fields to create a sum greater than the parts that can attack bigger challenges,” Crawford tells Technically Philly , her accent aglow. “So it’s taking new technologies and bringing together the creative arts and engineering or whoever else and pull them in that sandbox to have the largest impact possible.”
Now living in Center City, Crawford says she brings from NSF “an understanding of the topic barriers in these large projects.”
Below, Crawford talks about why Drexel was the right choice, the coolest research happening at the university right now and more.



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