There are currently more than 80,000 unaccounted-for service members from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War, and other conflicts. George Mason ĢAV’s ongoing collaboration with the (DPAA) is exploring new ways of locating the missing remains of those American service members and bringing closure to their families.
This partnership, which began December 2020, is finding success, and deeper meaning, as it extends beyond the classroom to the grieving families of prisoners of war (POWs) and missing soldiers, and it showcases George Mason’s commitment to being a veteran-serving institution.
John C. Winters, MA ’13, is a DPAA postdoctoral research fellow at George Mason’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) in the (CHSS) whose research includes war, diplomacy, and the 19th and 20th Գٳܰ. &Բ;
“I’ve previously worked on cemetery projects, and my responsibilities were to essentially help not only map the cemetery as it stood, but to identify places where people were not cataloged properly, or were forgotten over time,” said Winters, who has been a fellow at the center since January 2025.
Winters is also working with the with the goal of supporting and expanding a wide range of DPAA operations, from initial case development to field mission planning.
“The advantage of conducting research at the Center for History and New Media is that the people there are experts in using intricate digital mapping tools. It's really wonderful to see that faculty, as well as graduate students, are so comfortable using these tools to make their research accessible,” said Winters.
Digital mapping is a critical tool for the agency’s mission as it helps researchers visualize where someone was lost and supports investigation and excavation proposals.
George Mason has access to ArcGIS Pro, the mapping program that Winters is currently using to track missing or unidentified soldiers.
“ArcGIS is a really dynamic program. There are a lot of facets to it including a base-level digital cemetery mapping, and the ability to create informational and visually engaging maps. They're accurate and concise, and they deliver all the information at a glance,” said Winters, who earned his PhD in history from the City ĢAV of New York in 2020.
Jesse Stephen, chief of innovation at Defense POW/MIA accounting agency, said their mission has two goals: to search for, locate, recover, and identify missing-in-action personnel, and to communicate.
“These projects are multidimensional and address active casework. They also tell the story of a conflict and of our missing individuals,” said Stephen. “That involves going back into archives and looking for information about a particular case or campaign. It's organizing, reviewing, and analyzing that information we find, and then putting all these different pieces together to build a case.”
Over the course of the partnership, DPAA has learned more about more than 3,000 unaccounted-for losses. George Mason Fellows have reviewed more than 1,000 deceased personnel files of people who served alongside the unaccounted-for.
Throughout the process, DPAA staff, Service Casualty Offices, and family members meet and review the specifics of a loss. Documentation, including maps, is shared with family members, who can see where the last-known sighting of their loved one happened.
The partnership also employs George Mason students as interns and to date has given nine interns real-world experience in managing data, giving presentations, and project management. Beyond service to students, research partner fellows are encouraged to give presentations at museums and other venues on the mission and how unaccounted-for are found.
“These were people who gave their lives while fighting to protect democracy, so I see the important work I’m doing at George Mason as a public service and it’s relevant to a very large body of veterans in the Northern Virginia area,” said Winters.
Currently, more than 150 Virginian service members are unaccounted for.