Leadership Team | Rural Drug Addiction Research Center

The mission of the Administrative Core is to support Center activities, including facilitating faculty development, providing programmatic enhancements, creating engagement opportunities, promoting the use of Core resources, and evaluating the Center’s vision to enable long-term sustainability.

The Administrative Core organizes and leads our efforts to understand the unique and complex causes and consequences of substance use by supporting and mentoring faculty who use complementary approaches across a variety of disciplines. The Administrative Core is led by our Center Leadership Team and Center Coordinator.

Meet the Team

Rick Bevins

Principal Investigator and Center Director

Dr. Bevins leads the RDAR Center with 20 years of research experience ranging from psychology to immunology, cognition to neurochemistry, methamphetamine and tobacco addiction, vaccine development and medication testing, as well as robust translational science and model development. Previously, he has served as Associate Director for the Center from its inception in 2019. As Director, he now works closely with the Associate Directors and Center Coordinator to guide its development. As the main point of contact with other regional IDeA Programs, Bevins interacts with other institutions working on substance use and related health disparities in the Great Plains and across the United States.

Shilpa Buch

Associate Center Director

Shilpa Buch, Ph.D., is a Professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and a Co-Director of the NeuroAIDS Lab. Dr. Buch’s key responsibilities include building relations and collaborations with UNMC, strategic planning regarding UNMC opportunities, pre-clinical and basic synaptic research, and junior investigator mentoring and grant development.

Timothy Nelson

Associate Center Director

Timothy Nelson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at UNL. Dr. Nelson’s key responsibilities include strategic planning for the Center; human subjects research and compliance; longitudinal data collection, recruitment, and retention; identifying new research clusters that align with RDAR; early-stage investigator mentoring; and grant development.

Devan Crawford

Center Coordinator

Ms. Crawford provides administrative oversight for all aspects of the Center. She has expertise in financial operations, strategic planning, and project implementation. Over the last 15 years, she has served as Project Manager for more than 10 R01 level projects on substance use. Ms. Crawford’s key responsibilities include providing financial management, study design consultation, human subjects support, project development assistance, and supervision of day-to-day Center activities.