User:Vipul/National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) is a research and education center at the University of Maryland, College Park focused on the scientific study of the causes and consequences of terrorism in the United States and around the world. It maintains the Global Terrorism Database, that includes over 113,000 terrorist attacks and is described as the "most comprehensive unclassified data base on terrorist events in the world."

History
START was launched in 2005 as one of the Centers of Excellence supported by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. Since its launch, it has been under the directorship of Gary LaFree, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland, College Park. START received a 3-year $12 million initial grant from the Department of Homeland Security in 2005 and the grant was renewed by DHS in 2008. It launched its undergraduate Terrorism Studies Minor in 2007 and its graduate certificate in 2010.

Teaching
START has developed an undergraduate Global Terrorism Minor program, one of the options in the University of Maryland's Global Studies Minor program (other options include the International Development and Conflict Management minor, the International Engineering minor, the Global Poverty minor, and the Global Engineering minor). It also offers an online Gradual Certificate in Terrorism Analysis Program.

Data
START offers a number of datasets related to terrorism. The most important of these is the Global Terrorism Database, a database of over 113,000 terrorist attacks from 1970 till (as of June 2014) 2012, excluding the year 1993. START also hosts the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, now known as the Terrorist Organization Profiles, but does not actively maintain or take responsibility for the data.

Media coverage
The work at START has been cited and quoted in the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.