Thomas Finholt is research professor and associate dean for research and innovation at the School of Information and an adjunct assistant professor of psychology. He is also director of the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW) and the Center for Information Technology Integration.

Finholt's research focuses on the design, deployment, and use of cyberinfrastructure in science and engineering. He was a co-developer of the world's first operational collaboratory, the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC), which was a finalist in the science category for the 1998 Smithsonian/Computerworld awards. His recent work has focused on the development of NEESgrid, the collaboratory component of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). He has also conducted research on the impact of geographic dispersion and computer-mediated communication on trust and performance in virtual teams, on the effect of electronic and cash incentives on response rates for online surveys, and on the use of archived digital content. He co-founded the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW), and has served as the director of CREW since 1997.