Below is a message from Executive Vice Provost for Research & Innovation Aleister Saunders, PhD:

To support the growth of the University’s research, scholarly and creative activities, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Maria T. Schultheis, PhD, as the Vice Provost of Research.

Schultheis, a clinical neuropsychologist, is well-known to the Drexel community — as a member of the Psychology Department faculty since 2005, she served as the department chair and served as the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2018-2019. She also earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at Drexel in 1998. Prior to joining Drexel’s faculty, Schultheis was a research scientist at Kessler Medical Rehabilitation Research and Education Corp. in West Orange, N.J., where her responsibilities included the creation and development of the Virtual Reality for Rehabilitation lab.

In her new role, Schultheis will focus on sharing and integrating the faculty perspective into improving our services to support Drexel’s research community. Specifically, this year she will work closely with the team to establish an Office of Sponsored Projects which will serve to streamline processes across the sponsored projects lifespan. This effort will also integrate the Research Systems & Analytics team to successfully implement a replacement to COEUS. She will work closely with, and report to, me.

Following her undergraduate studies at Rutgers University, Schultheis earned a master’s in biological science at Temple University. She completed an NIH post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

As a researcher, Schultheis’ work has been supported by more than $4.8 million in public and private grants. She has consulted with the National Institutes of Health and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, along with various international research agencies. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, presentations and book chapters.