Work on Snow Squall VR Simulation Moves Forward

Feb 3, 2025

1 min

Jase Bernhardt

Last year, Dr. Jase Bernhardt, Hofstra associate professor of geology, environment, and sustainability, was awarded a $100,000 Road to Zero Community Traffic Safety Grant from the National Safety Council, to develop a VR simulation of driving in a snow squall. The project aims to share information about the onset of snow squalls, the importance of heeding emergency weather advisories, and how drivers should respond if they are on the road when a snow squall occurs.


Dr. Bernhardt has partnered with meteorologists from the National Weather Service office in State College, PA, and was in Pennsylvania recently to participate in a press conference and conduct field research supporting his work. The press conference was promoted on PAcast – the official website of the Pennsylvania state government. Local news stations like NBC affiliate WJAC-TV; ABC affiliate WHTM-TV; WPMT-TV Fox43 News; and PennWatch covered the press conference.






Connect with:
Jase Bernhardt

Jase Bernhardt

Associate Professor of Geology, Environment, and Sustainability

Dr. Bernhardt has had a lifelong passion for studying weather and climate. His current research focuses hurricane preparedness.

Rip Tide safetyHurricanesClimatologyClimate ChangeWeather

You might also like...

Check out some other posts from Hofstra University

1 min

Trump and Zelenskyy Clash in the Oval Office

Dr. Paul Fritz, associate professor of political science, was featured in a Fox 5 WNYW-TV news segment about the tense exchange between President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inside the Oval Office.

1 min

Red Light Cameras Emerge as a Politically Divisive Issue

Lawrence Levy, associate vice president and executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies, is featured in a Newsday article about red-light camera programs and how they are emerging as a divisive political issues on Long Island. He likened the red-light camera program to that of congestion pricing for its “good government motive” aimed to improve traffic safety, charging drivers who violate the law while gaining money to help pay for the county police department. The issue, Levy said, is “a real tough one for politicians to gauge because of the mix of potential court cases and legislative actions that could be taken and the general mood of the public about anything that could be seen as a tax by another name.”

1 min

Survey Shows U.S. Christian Population Stabilizing

Dr. Julie Byrne, Hofstra University’s Monsignor Thomas Hartman Chair in Catholic Studies and chair of the Department of Religion, was interviewed by Newsday about a survey released by the Pew Research Center that found that the share of Americans identifying as Christian appears to have stabilized after falling for years. Dr. Byrne said that the stabilization in “Christian adherence might mean, among other things, that Christian churches learned from the prior years’ huge decline not to take for granted its majority-religion status, and that the churches tried new strategies of tone, outreach, and connection that kept the people they already had.

View all posts