By Michael Frazier
Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

NEW YORK — The small "research center" will have a very big mission.

It will study emergency responses to catastrophic disasters such as the 2001 terror attacks. The center takes on the immense challenge with a three-person staff, and it will be operated out of the office of its director, Charles Jennings.

The Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies officially launched Thursday at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. It is named for a 28-year-old probationary firefighter who perished in the attacks.

"We recognize a need for a research agenda relative to first responders, trying to document from the ground level up, lessons that we've learned, and to develop information that would be of use to first responders in dealing with large-scale events," said Jennings, professor at the school's Department of Protection Management.

The research for the center, which opens a week before the seventh anniversary of the attacks, is funded by a more than a $169,000 grant from the Justice Department. Supporters are hopeful the center can be expanded in the future once more funding is secured.

"For the Regenhard family, this center will carry on Christian's legacy," said his mother, Sally Regenhard, founder and chairwoman of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, a citizen's group that advocates construction reform and has pressured Congress to investigate the fall of the WTC towers. "Through the work of its dedicated faculty, this center will honor all first responders who lost their lives as a result of 9/11 and can help to ensure the safety of all responders in the future."

Regenhard, Jennings and Glenn Corbett, the school's department chairman for the protection management department, will speak at the launch on the Manhattan school's campus.

Studies at the center will not only dissect large-scale responses to past disasters, but also research any possible future threats, such as a major earthquake on the West Coast.

Officials said a digital database of the findings will be created. That information will be used to make public policy recommendations, develop training methods and educational programs.

"Critical observations made by emergency responders can be used to change response protocols," said Corbett, chairman of the center's advisory board.

Jennings acknowledged the challenges the startup faces. He said he'll develop relationships with researchers in related fields across the country to help with the fact gathering.

Plans for the center began to materialize shortly after 9/11, when Corbett and Jennings met Regenhard. All of them supported a federal probe into the World Trade Center disaster.

Regenhard, who doesn't have a defined role, said she will do all she can to make sure the center is successful.

"I wanted something in the academic realm that would have relevance to helping save first responders and members of the public," she said.

Copyright 2008, Newsday