[1] Since July 2012, she is the Robert E. Chason Chair in Translational Research in the MIND Institute and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento.

[2] Previously, from 1983–2012, she was chief of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience in the intramural program of the National Institute of Mental Health.

[9] Crawley is at the origin of several widely employed tests used to evaluate, for example, anxiety-related and social behavior in rodents, especially mice.

[13][14][15][16] Crawley has been president of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (2000-2001),[17] the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society (2008-2011),[18] and chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Neuroscience Section (2018-2019).

[19] She has been editor-in-chief of Neuropeptides, associate editor of Molecular Autism[20] and Current Protocols in Neuroscience,[21] and member of several editorial boards, among them Autism Research,[22] Genes, Brain and Behavior,[23] and Trends in Pharmacological Sciences.