Using VR technology, Dominic Willoughby is making sports safer for athletes with a history of concussions.
By Jess Abel, UNC College of Arts and Sciences
Dominic Willoughby flips on the lights in Woollen Gym to begin his latest research test.
It looks empty in the gym to passersby, but inside Willoughby’s Meta Quest 2 VR headset a simulated soccer stadium awaits.
The objective of the test is simple. Willoughby asks athlete research participants to sprint the length of the simulated soccer field to chase down a virtual opponent, dodging obstacles and defenders along the way.
“Participants get really into it,” said Willoughby, a third-year Ph.D. student from San Francisco. Shoe squeaks on the hardwood are common as athletes race through the gym to pursue their target.
Using the data he collects — athletes’ speed, charted courses, directional changes, success rate — Willoughby is addressing a monumental goal in recreational, collegiate and professional sports: reducing athlete injury.
Locker room to laboratory
In a different world, Willoughby might have been one of the research study’s participants instead of the principal investigator.
Growing up, he was a multi-sport athlete: a gymnast, a runner, a soccer goalie on the Olympic development team. But a series of serious injuries, including five concussions, sidelined him from many of the sports he loved.
That experience combined with a growing interest in exercise and sport science led Willoughby to the field of concussion research.
As an undergraduate at Elon University, he first looked at the connection between concussions and secondary musculoskeletal injury after reading a journal publication about the subject. Inspired by the article, Willoughby conducted his own research on concussions and resulting knee injuries. It was a pilot study, but the university took notice. He won the department’s exercise science “Major of the Year” award.
“It was a very validating moment,” he said.
After an internship at Stanford University’s Human Performance Lab and a job as Elon’s athletic trainer, Willoughby began his full-time research career at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. There, he helped coordinate a $15 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health which studied concussion symptoms in children.
By the time the study began to enroll participants, Willoughby knew he was ready to expand his research through a doctoral program.
That article he read years ago, the one that first sparked his interest in concussion research as an undergraduate? It was written by Jason Mihalik, UNC-Chapel Hill professor of exercise and sport science.
“Chapel Hill was the exact place that I needed to be — the department, the type of work, the people,” said Willoughby.
Protecting athletes
As a student in the Human Movement Science Curriculum, a cooperative effort between the UNC School of Medicine and the exercise and sport science department in the College of Arts and Sciences, Willoughby is advised by Adam Kiefer, a UNC-Chapel Hill expert in performance enhancement and injury prevention.
Kiefer also co-directs the Simulation, Training, Analytics and Rehabilitation (STAR) Heel Performance Laboratory, home of Willoughby’s work.
Put simply, Willoughby’s research exists to reduce athlete injury. His study focuses on 18- to 35-year-olds in all sports — basketball to ballet, running to rugby.
With a focus on behavioral modeling, Willoughby is expanding the field’s understanding of the complex relationship between concussion, injury risk and movement.
As he watches athletes complete the VR test and analyzes the data, he is focused on the risks that athletes take — and don’t take — after concussion. These changes in risk, in movement, can lead to secondary injuries from ankle sprains to ACL tears. And those injuries can take a star player out of their sport for good.
“I want that injury risk after concussion to drop back down to healthy athletes’ levels,” he said.
It’s a goal that benefits everyone: athletes, organizations and sports fans.