UDRI names new director

Allan Crasto, who has worked at the University of Dayton Research Institute for 27 years, will take over as director of the organization starting next month.

Crasto says making further inroads with Dayton industries will rank among his top priorities at the helm of UDRI.

“I want to make sure we sustain our trajectory of growth,” Crasto said. “Also, we must diversify. We don’t want to neglect our major customer — the federal government. But we need to expand our industrial research, and expand a little more into the (local) commercial sector as well.”

The Friday announcement comes as the university goes through a series of leadership changes, including a change at the top when Eric Spina replaces Dan Curran as president next year.

Other recent high-profile changes include the hiring of Neil Sullivan as director of athletics, Paul Bobrowski retiring as the dean of the School of Business Administration, and Andrew Horner being named vice president for finance and administration.

In addition, the university announced earlier this week that it would start an internal search for a new provost. Paul Benson’s two-year term as interim provost will come to an end next summer.

UD also has launched national searches for the vice president for enrollment management and vice president for advancement.

A university official told this newspaper that UD is going through “a lot of churn” and “a period of moving pieces.” This comes after being “very stable for a long period of time.”

Crasto, whose education and career background are in chemistry, advanced materials science and engineering in his native India and in the U.S., joined the Research Institute in 1988 as a research scientist specializing in polymer-matrix composites. He currently serves as associate director.

“We work with a lot of small businesses in the region and the state. These companies don’t necessarily have the capital or resources, or equipment. So we work with a lot of small businesses to help them develop and validate technologies and take them to market,” Crasto said.

“That’s a tremendous help to the region and the small businesses here.”

As head of nonmetallic materials, Crasto led his division’s revenue growth for on-campus research activities from $600,000 in fiscal year 1999 to $9.6 million in fiscal year 2006, according to UD, and helped grow the research institute’s workforce by 43 percent in the same time period.

The nonmetallic materials division also garnered nearly $11 million in state funding from the Ohio Third Frontier program under his leadership, paving the way for future awards to UDRI from various state programs.

UDRI’s growth in advanced materials helped propel UD from fifth to second place among all universities in the nation for sponsored materials research, a ranking it has held for 11 of the past 12 years, according to the National Science Foundation.

Crasto will take over for John Leland, UD’s vice president for research and executive director at the institute. Leland was named VP for research in June, but has continued to serve as UDRI director during the search for his replacement.

Leland says during his tenure as director, starting in 2005, UDRI has become more important to the region.

“Industries rely not just on graduates that come out of the university, but also the ability of the Dayton region to attract top talent, and so we are a part of that larger magnet that attracts top talent to the Dayton region,” Leland said.

“This was a manufacturing town, and still is to a large degree, and if you go back 25 years, the thought that manufacturing required a lot of education was a foreign concept. But if you go onto a manufacturing floor these days, a much higher percentage of the jobs require an education now.”

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