Dr. Crawford’s Ph.D. research was carried out in London as a member of the team that identified the first genetic causes of Alzheimer’s Disease. Relocating to Florida in 1992 she discovered the “Swedish” mutation, which has been used in innumerable laboratory models of Alzheimer’s world-wide. She co-founded the Roskamp Institute, which became a stand-alone research Institute in Sarasota in 2003 and is now home to a staff of more than 45 scientists, clinicians, graduate students and research assistants.

In addition to her Alzheimer’s research, in the quest for therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative and neurological diseases she has also developed and characterized laboratory models for Traumatic Brain Injury, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Gulf War Illness. Her teams use state-of-the-art technology to interrogate these models in order to understand the molecular mechanisms causing disease, validating their findings in human clinical samples in order to ensure the results will have relevance for clinical translation. She also directs the novel, laboratory focused, 4-year Roskamp Institute Ph.D. program, which to-date has graduated 19 new scientists. Dr. Crawford’s research programs are funded by the Veterans’ Administration, the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, and she has published over 217 peer reviewed research papers.