Interdisciplinary Centre in Interactive Digital Media
From an administrative Institute from 2008 to 2010, the Institute for Media Innovation (IMI) has constantly evolved towards a research Institute in interactive digital media and a catalyst for all NTU Professors. It is now an international interdisciplinary research Institute where several activities take place. More than 30 PhD students are working in IMI and work on various disciplines in an interdisciplinary way. The monthly interdisciplinary PhD seminar is very popular and gives the opportunity to all IMI PhD students to exchange their ideas and research topics together. The IMI distinguished lecture series brings top researchers from various parts of the world to address key issues in the interactive digital media domain.
Since one year, the new International Centre, BeingThere, has been established at IMI with a global funding of 20 Million singapore dollars. It groups together key international partners as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zuerich, Switzerland, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in the States and more than 15 Professors in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) who all work on the topics of 3D teleconference. In this project, IMI researchers have focused their research particularly on virtual humans and social robots who can act as substitutes or teleguided by real persons elsewhere.
Our new unique immersive room, the only one in the world to have 320 degrees seamless rounded screening surface, attracts more and more researchers from all NTU and becomes a tool for visualisation for any discipline. Plenty of demos from many professors coming from different schools are demonstrated. Visitors are coming daily and researchers are welcome to visit or develop applications for this immersive 3D room at any time.
Interdisciplinary research teams have been set up through out campus on domains as pink dolphins simulation, 3D cloth simulation and fashion shows, crowds and groups simulation and 3D medical physiological humans to cite a few. These seed projects allow researchers to get used to interdisciplinary research and then search for new grants from different sources by reinforcing the IMI research core group.
This year, a business manager has been hired in order to find more opportunities of applying our research in various companies and agencies. One of the new priority of IMI is now to develop new businesses and spin offs.
IMI will host also several international workshops and conferences such as CASA 2012 . IMI will also take a very active role by chairing the computer animation film festival at SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 and organizing special events related to 3D fashion shows. Many publications and books will be published as research is increasing to reach the level of a truly recognized top research institute in Media Innovation in the world.
