Crawford had been assistant dean for research from 2006 to 2008 and also had been interim associate dean from January 2009 to 2010. With faculty appointments in agronomy, civil engineering, and electrical and computer engineering (by courtesy), at Purdue, she holds the Purdue Chair of Excellence in Earth Observation and is director of the Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing.

Crawford received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Illinois and her doctoral degree in systems engineering from Ohio State University. She was a faculty member at the University of Texas in Austin from 1990 to 2005, where she founded an interdisciplinary research and applications development program in space-based and airborne remote sensing.  Dr. Crawford's research interests focus on development of statistical techniques for analysis of spatial-temporal processes and their application to remotely sensed data, including classification, data fusion, and knowledge transfer in data mining.