[Dr. Roy] Aaron is the director of the Providence VA Medical Center's Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine – a collaborative project of Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School, the Providence VA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build better artificial limbs for soldiers returning home from Iraq and for other amputees.

The project, which was launched in late 2004 with a $7.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, recently received a $200,000 grant from the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council to support the virtual-reality work.

The STAC grant will enable researchers to build a virtual environment in which an amputee wearing a prosthetic leg is tested on a moving hydraulic platform surrounded by three-dimensional video projections.