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SPOKANE, Wash. – Bryan Vila, a senior researcher associated with Washington State University’s Sleep and Performance Research Center, has been awarded a $610,000 grant by the Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research to expand the center’s Spokane-based facilities with a Critical Job Tasks Simulation Laboratory.

Slated to be operational in 2009, the new facility will be fully integrated with the existing residential sleep laboratory. The combined facilities will provide researchers with a controlled, yet realistic operational environment to study the effects of sleep and sleep deprivation on skills critical to the success and survival of police officers, military personnel, first responders and others working in 24/7 operational settings.

“With the addition of this new lab, we’ll have a full-fidelity sleep/wake/work research facility that allows us to bridge the gap between controlled studies that rely on abstract laboratory tasks and naturalistic field studies,” said center director Gregory Belenky. He believes the combined labs will be the only such integrated resource in the world.

In collaboration with Belenky and center assistant director Hans Van Dongen, Vila—a former police officer and Marine who is currently a professor of criminal justice specializing in police fatigue issues—will use the new lab to study the impact of sleep deprivation on the performance of experienced police officers. He points out that this research translates directly to war fighters and military peacekeepers, who face similar physiological and cognitive challenges.

The grant funding, which was awarded as part of the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP), will pay for simulation equipment that will help the researchers understand the impact of sleep loss in both routine operations and close combat situations.

Planned equipment purchases include deadly-force judgment training simulators to replicate violent encounters, driving simulators, eye-tracking devices that measure situational awareness and decision-making time and smart garments that unobtrusively collect physiological data. This system of tools will enable researchers to simultaneously monitor a wide range of physiological and behavioral variables, including alertness, situational awareness, arousal management, executive functions and communication skills.

The simulation lab will also serve as a test bed for evaluating the effectiveness of training simulators widely used by police and the military.

“Our goal is for this lab to contribute to the performance, health and safety of those who serve and protect us—as well as the safety of those they serve,” said Vila.

About the Sleep and Performance Research Center
Established in 2004 through $4.5 million in congressionally directed funding, the Sleep and Performance Research Center includes a state-of-the-art human sleep research laboratory located on the Riverpoint campus at WSU Spokane, and two world-class basic sleep research laboratories on WSU’s main campus in Pullman. The human sleep research laboratory accommodates carefully controlled experiments to study the effects of sleep and sleep loss on human cognitive functioning. With the addition of the critical job task simulation laboratory, the center’s facility in Spokane will be the only one of its kind in the world.

About the WSU Criminal Justice Program
The WSU criminal justice program, founded in 1941, is one of the oldest such programs in the nation. Ranked 18th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in 2005, it is the home of the first chapter of Alpha Phi Sigma, the criminal justice honorary. Graduates of the program have distinguished themselves in law enforcement, juvenile justice, corrections, government and industrial security, and state planning agency research and evaluation positions.

About Washington State University Spokane
WSU Spokane is the urban campus of Washington State University, a land-grant research university founded in 1890. The campus features advanced studies and research in health sciences and health professions, the design disciplines, education, social and policy sciences, and science and technology. Washington State University is one of just 95 public and private research universities with very high research activity, according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifications. In addition, U.S. News & World Report ranks WSU as one of the top public research universities in the nation.

Related Web sites:

September 2005 News Release on Bryan Vila: http://wsunews.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=10147

WSU Spokane: www.spokane.wsu.edu

WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center: http://www.wsu.edu/sprc

WSU Spokane Criminal Justice Program: http://www.spokane.wsu.edu/Academics/CrimJ/

WSU Office of Research: www.research.wsu.edu

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