$1 million U.S. Department of Justice grant will support virtual reality training for domestic violence response

Taylor Thomas — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:05:16 +0000

$1 million U.S. Department of Justice grant will support virtual reality training for domestic violence response Taylor Thomas Mon, 04/13/2026 - 10:05

Domestic violence 911 calls often place first responders in the midst of crisis and confusion. The scene may involve conflicting stories, visible injuries, frightened children, and little clarity about what just happened.

At 91��, researchers have secured more than $1 million in federal funding to help frontline professionals prepare for these complex moments. The grant from the U.S. Department of Justice will help fund a novel virtual reality (VR) training program to strengthen interprofessional responses to domestic violence.

Social work professors Denise Hines and Holly Matto will co-lead the one-year project in the College of Public Health, partnering with local law enforcement, domestic violence organizations, and health care providers in Northern Virginia to design and pilot the training. The team also includes social work assistant professors Michelle Hand and Anna Parisi as co-investigators, and Bethany Cieslowski, chief innovation officer for immersive technologies.

The faculty members, as well as College of Public Health Dean Melissa J. Perry, expressed gratitude to U.S. Senators Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia for their support of the congressional funding, and to the Department of Justice for administering the $1,026,029 award through its Byrne Justice Assistance Grants program.

VR headsets in the college's Lab for Immersive Technologies and Simulation.

“We’re thankful for the leadership and support to bring the power of virtual reality to improve health and safety,” Perry said. “Virginia will lead the way in coordinated, prevention-focused responses to domestic violence. Looking ahead, the model developed here can one day help communities across the country.”

Using technology and resources in the College of Public Health’s Lab for Immersive Technologies and Simulation, the project team will build VR case scenarios that reflect the complexities of domestic violence calls. The simulations will allow frontline professionals to practice coordinated responses and experiment with different approaches before facing similar situations in real life.

“The innovation here is bringing together professionals like law enforcement, social workers, and health care providers to co-design new VR cases that are relevant to challenges on the ground,” Matto said.

Domestic violence remains a public health and safety crisis. In Virginia alone, the statewide domestic and sexual violence hotline received more than 70,000 calls in 2023. Family and intimate partner violence accounts for roughly one-third of all homicides in the state annually. And for first responders, these calls can also be among the most volatile and unpredictable situations they encounter.

“Domestic violence calls are some of the toughest calls, but also some of the most common calls that law enforcement will come across,” said Hines, the Elisabeth Shirley Enochs Endowed Professor of Social Work. “They're often coming in at a precarious and dangerous moment.”

Thumbnail photo via Pexels.

Topics

federal funding

grants

Department of Justice

Intimate Partner Violence

Domestic Violence

CPH Faculty

Lab for Immersive Technologies and Simulation

virtual reality

Research

GCI-Grand Challenge Initiative

GCI-Health

Learn more about George Mason's Grand Challenge Initiative

Key Takeaways:

Domestic violence calls can be complex and dangerous situations for first responders.
George Mason researchers secured more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Justice to develop a virtual reality training program to improve domestic violence response.
The VR simulations will allow law enforcement, health care providers, and social workers to practice coordinated responses to difficult domestic violence scenarios in a safe training environment.

In This Story

Denise Hines, PhD

Holly Matto, PhD, LCSW-C

Michelle D. Hand, PhD, MSW, LSW

Bethany Cieslowski, DNP

Melissa J. Perry, Sc.D., MHS, MBA

Ascoli’s Lab Continues to Crowdsource

tdonnel — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 16:07:11 +0000

Ascoli’s Lab Continues to Crowdsource tdonnel Thu, 10/20/2022 - 12:07

In This Story

Giorgio Ascoli

A study led by bioengineering professor Giorgio Ascoli has received $250,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. The project will make use of a massive open-source repository called Hippocampome maintained by Ascoli’s lab.

Ascoli, along with Gina C. Adam of George Washington University, is applying learning rules to “a full-scale spiking neural network simulation of the CA3-CA1 region [of the brain],” a EurekAlert! news release states. The simulation will be based on information from Hippocampome. The release further states that the project, called "CRCNS22 Learning Rules in the Hippocampus and their Mapping to Neuromorphic Systems," will enable scientists to estimate “how much of the learning in these neuroanatomically constrained networks is due to dynamic synaptic plasticity and how much is due to fixed neuroanatomy.”

Incidentally, Ascoli’s lab recently received attention via a gmu-tv video highlighting another of its open-source repositories, NeuroMorpho.org. Ascoli says, “The future of neurological research is collaborative, and NeuroMorpho.org is where collaboration happens.”

Topics

Neuroscience

Bioengineering

federal funding

federal funding

$1 million U.S. Department of Justice grant will support virtual reality training for domestic violence response

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Ascoli’s Lab Continues to Crowdsource

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