Gary LaFree is Director of the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, as well as professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. START is a research and education Consortium that includes more than 60 researchers from more than 40 universities around the world. Since 2005, START has received more than $30 million in funding. Dr. LaFree received his PhD in Sociology from Indiana University in 1979. In 2006-2007, Dr. LaFree served as President of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), the largest professional association of criminologists in the world. Dr. LaFree was named a Research Fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 2007. Dr. LaFree has also served on the National Academy of Science’s Crime, Law and Justice Committee (2008-), as the Past President of the ASC’s Division on International Criminology (1991-1993), the chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Crime, Law and Deviance (1991-1993), the Executive Committee of the Consortium of Social Science Associations, and the Executive Committee of the Justice Research Statistics Association (2000-2001; 1993-1994).While at the University of Maryland, Dr. LaFree was a founding member of the Democracy Collaborative (DC), a cross-disciplinary group based at UMD but with academic affiliates at 25 other universities around the world. For the past several years, Dr. La Free has also been an invited member of the National Consortium of Violence Research. NCOVR is a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional consortium of approximately 60 scientists.