MIT Open Learning launches Center for Advanced Virtuality
The new center will explore how MIT can use virtual reality and artificial intelligence and other technologies to better serve human needs.
Virtual reality (VR) technologies are having a growing impact on people's everyday lives. Sanjay Sarma, vice president for open learning, and D. Fox Harrell, professor of digital media and artificial intelligence in the Comparative Media Studies Program and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, have combined their efforts to launch MIT Open Learning’s new initiative, the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. The new initiative will help determine how MIT can use a group of technologies including virtual and mixed reality (collectively called extended reality or XR) to better serve human needs through artful innovation of virtual experiences, on-campus and beyond.
Harrell’s research explores the relationship between imagination and computation and involves developing new forms of computational narrative, gaming, social media, and related digital media based in computer science, cognitive science, and digital media arts.
The center — “MIT Virtuality” for short — will bring faculty, researchers, and VR professionals together to create new models for the deployment of impactful XR learning. The center will focus on creation, research, and innovation, through its Studio, Lab, Salon, and Hub functionalities.
MIT Virtuality aims to enhance the production, research, and innovation capacity of VR at MIT, while investigating the social and ethical impacts of technologies as they are being innovated. Anyone interested in more information is encouraged to visit MIT Virtuality online.
See the full story here: http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-open-learning-launches-center-advanced-virtuality-1127