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Published February 13, 2010 | Version Submitted
Book Section - Chapter Open

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

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Institute for Advanced Study
  • 3. ROR icon Drexel University
  • 4. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Contributors

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.

Attached Files

Submitted - 0907.3520.pdf

Files

0907.3520.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
97362
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20190723-142758921

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/0907.3520 (URL)

Funding

NSF
AST-0407448
NSF
HCC-0917817
Ajax Foundation

Dates

Created
2019-07-23
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Series Name
Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
Series Volume or Issue Number
33