After spending his career in industry, Dr. Croll joined the faculty at NDSU in 2000 and was Chair of the department from 2006 until 2012. His research interests are mainly concerned with the protective and appearance properties of coating films, their durability when subject to weathering, physical (including nano-) characterization of coating systems and art conservation science.

Professor Croll was with Millennium Inorganic Chemicals prior to NDSU, where he was the Director of Pigment Research and External Alliances. He gained a degree in physics from the University of London (UK), then completed a doctorate in physics (viscoelasticity of polymers) at the University of Leeds (UK). He first worked in England on the applications of polymers in electrical engineering, then moved to the Division of Building Research in the National Research Council Canada where he focused on polymer coatings for the first time. After periods in the construction chemicals and cable-making industries, he moved to Sherwin-Williams where among many things, he worked on film formation in aqueous and non-aqueous coatings, rheology, weathering durability, adhesion, colloid stability and polymer characterization and became the Director of Research in the Coatings Division.  For a few years, at Sherwin-Williams, he managed a research program in Ukraine involving 100 scientists on 15 projects in 5 institutes and universities.

Dr. Croll is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the Institute of Physics (U. K.) and the American Coatings Association. He is a member of the editorial review board of "Progress in Organic Coatings" and the Journal of Coatings Technology and is on the organizing committee for the Coatings Science International annual meetings. Dr. Croll has published articles in the coatings, polymers, mechanics and corrosion literature and has presented papers at the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society and at meetings and symposia of Societies for Coatings Technology, the Gordon Conference on Colloids and has been an invited speaker at several university symposia and short courses.  In 2012, he was awarded the Mattiello Award by the American Coatings Association and, in 2017, the Roy W. Tess Award from the American Chemical Society, for lifetime contributions to coatings science.

“…applied science is just as interesting as pure science, and what's more, it's a damned sight more difficult.” -William. B. Hardy (1864-1934), English physician who became a pioneer of the science of wetting, spreading, and interfacial phenomena.