Cheryl Regehr deals in the dark and even ugly aspects of life. Sexual assault. Airline disasters. Industrial accidents. A long-time counsellor to victims of traumatic events, this associate professor of social work now uses research to help emergency workers better manage human trauma.

Twenty years ago, Regehr began a career in the small but growing area of emergency mental health care. Working in a variety of settings - a community mental health service, an in-patient psychiatry unit, sexual assault care centres, and a sex offender treatment program - she soon discovered that trauma was the common thread in each scenario.

"As a practitioner, I was always interested in writing about what I did," recalls Regehr, who completed both her master's and PhD at U of T. After chronicling her experiences, she wrote an article that was picked up by a well-known international journal. "That reinforced my interest in the academic side of things."

Years later, Regehr is a well-recognized authority on trauma social work, featured regularly in national media for her opinion on events such as 9/11 and the SARS outbreaks. She has shifted her focus from emergency mental health to workplace trauma, investigating the challenges facing child welfare workers, police officers, fire fighters and paramedics.

Part of her work, which is funded primarily through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), examines the impact that the public inquiry process - which in Toronto recently drew negative attention to both child welfare workers and police officers - has on public service workers. Some of that research will appear in Regehr's upcoming book, In the Line of Fire: Trauma in Emergency Services, due to be published next year by Oxford University Press.

But what keeps her most passionate is a commitment to translating research into practical applications for the community. "We really have to keep the 'public' in publicly-funded universities," Regehr insists. "We have to make our research relevant for and accessible to the people around us."

The people around her include students, who have voted her 'Teacher of the Year' the last three years in a row. Currently she teaches three master's courses and supervises a handful of doctoral students. "I'm passionate about teaching - I love working with students."

Social service agencies - which desperately need practical advice on research projects - are another important community for Regehr. As director of the Centre for Applied Social Research (CASR) at the Faculty of Social Work, she aims to strengthen the link between academic research and the community's research needs.

The Centre achieves this goal in a number of ways, including conducting contract research for agencies like Citizenship and Immigration Canada, helping community agencies evaluate the success of their programs and teaching them how to do their own research.

CASR also acts a resource for faculty by helping them find and then administer funding for their research. Currently the office manages over $8 million - which typically represents investments from federal government sources including SSHRC and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - that is earmarked for research projects grappling with issues such as aging, child welfare and social assistance.

"Some of what we do for the outside community is essentially pro bono," says Regehr, noting that helping community service agencies evaluate the effectiveness of their programs is a crucial element of CASR's mission. "We really see it as the university's responsibility to society. It's truly applied social research - an immediate application for the community around us."

With a broad smile and easy manner, Regehr exhibits few signs of a stressed-out social worker. And while she admits her work - particularly the hands-on element - does take its toll, she says the benefits far outweigh the costs.

"There's an incredible reward in working with people in trauma situations, because human beings are so remarkably resilient. It's a real honour to be with people who are managing to overcome tremendous hardship."

And Regehr insists that her work in the field has been crucial to her success in academia. "The great thing about being a practitioner and a researcher is that your questions come from your practice. You see something and you think, 'Why is that?' And then you're just driven to find the answers."