Exploring the Use of Virtual Worlds as a Scientific Research Platform: The Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA)

Creators: Djorgovski, S. G.; Hut, P.; McMillan, S.; Vesperini, E.; Knop, R.; Farr, W.; Graham, M. J.

Others:: Lehmann-Grube, Fritz; Sablatnig, Jan

Abstract

We describe the Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA), the first professional scientific organization based exclusively in virtual worlds (VWs). The goals of MICA are to explore the utility of the emerging VR and VWs technologies for scientific and scholarly work in general, and to facilitate and accelerate their adoption by the scientific research community. MICA itself is an experiment in academic and scientific practices enabled by the immersive VR technologies. We describe the current and planned activities and research directions of MICA, and offer some thoughts as to what the future developments in this arena may be.

Additional Information

© 2010 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering. The work of MICA has been supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation grants AST-0407448 and HCC-0917817, and by the Ajax Foundation. We also acknowledge numerous volunteers who have contributed their time and talents to this organization, especially S. McPhee, S. Smith, K. Prowl, C. Woodland, D. Enfield, S. Cianciulli, T. McConaghy, W. Scotti, J. Ames, and C. White, among many others. We also thank the conference organizers for their interest and support. SGD also acknowledges the creative atmosphere of the Aspen Center for Physics, where this paper was completed.

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