Congratulations Professor David Crawford

Professor David Crawford has been awarded the title of Alfred Deakin Professor, a prestigious award that acknowledges not just his outstanding efforts in research, but his longstanding commitment and service to the University.

Professor Crawford, the Head of the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, joined Deakin in 1995. Since then, he has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to furthering the University’s aims in relation to research.

“It is very humbling to be given this award,” he said.

“The University has been very good to me and I know there are many other people equally deserving of this sort of recognition, so I consider it an honour to have been picked out of the flock in this way.

“I believe it is also recognition for the terrific team of people with whom I have been working.

“I believe research at Deakin is on a trajectory and right now this is a great environment to be working in.

“We are really going somewhere in research and when you look across the university, it is happening in a broad range of areas.

“I have long had a belief in what we could achieve in research in my field and a lot of ideas about how we could achieve it.

“This award also says to me that some of those ideas have been good ones and that too is something of which I am very proud.”

Since coming to Deakin Professor Crawford has developed a reputation as one of Australia’s most respected researchers in the field of behavioural, social and environmental influences on nutrition and physical activity. His work on the epidemiology of obesity and the development and evaluation of obesity prevention strategies for children and adults is nationally and internationally recognised.

He has published more than 150 papers. In the last 12 years he and his collaborators have attracted $8 million in external research funding to support his research program and $1.5 million in fellowships. Professor Crawford is currently the Principal or Chief Investigator in relation to four NH&MRC Grants, one ARC Grant and a grant from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation. These grants total $4.52 million.

As well as being a distinguished and successful researcher, Professor Crawford is also an accomplished research mentor.

He has been awarded a Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education citation for his outstanding contribution to student learning through effective training and mentoring of Higher Degree by Research students in nutrition and physical activity.

He was also the recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellent Contributions to Research (Research Facilitator) in 2005.

As well as a personal chair at Deakin, Professor Crawford is a Visiting Professor at the EMGO (Public Health) Institute in the Netherlands and he is an Academic Associate, Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer, Cancer Council of Victoria.

Professor Crawford has supervised 13 post-doctoral fellows and 14 PhD students. He is nationally and internationally recognised as a Member of the National Heart Foundation's Panel of Experts, the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute Performance Evaluation Committee, and the NH&MRC Grant Review Panel (Public Health). He is Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity and a reviewer for many leading journals in his field.

Professor Crawford is currently Deputy Chair of the Research and Research Training Committee of the Academic Board.

> BACK