Jonathan Crabtree, PhD

Jonathan Crabtree is the recently appointed inaugural Director of the Research Data Management Core (RDMC) at UNC Chapel Hill. He was previously the Director for Research Data Information Systems at the HW Odum Institute for Social Science. The institute’s social science data archive is one of the oldest and most extensive in the United States. As director, Crabtree completely revamped the institute’s technology infrastructure and has positioned the institute to assume a leading national as well as international role in information archiving.

Crabtree’s experience in social science, information science, information technology and networking as well as his engineering background bring different perspectives to his current role. Crabtree joined the institute over 30 years ago and is responsible for designing and maintaining the technology infrastructure that supports the institute’s wide array of services. Before moving to the social science side of campus he was an information systems technologist for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. His grounding in medical information technology adds to his education and training in electrical engineering, library and information science, digital preservation, computer science, economics, geographic information systems, hydrology and geomorphology. His Ph.D. in Information Science is from the UNC School of Information and Library Science with his research focused on the auditing of trusted repositories.