Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics

From Mica

The Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA) is a professional scientific and educational, non-profit organization based in virtual worlds [VWs]. We are currently using Second Life (SL), and the Intel's OpenSim-based world ScienceSim, and may expand to other venues as the VWs evolve.

The goals of MICA include:

• Exploration, development and promotion of VWs and virtual reality [VR] technologies for professional research in astronomy and related fields.
• Providing and developing novel social networking venues and mechanisms for scientific collaboration and communications, including professional meetings, effective telepresence, etc.
• Use of VWs and VR technologies for education and public outreach.
• Exchange of ideas and joint efforts with other scientific disciplines in promoting these goals for science and scholarship in general.

MICA is essentially an experiment to see how we can use the immersive VR technology as a scientific and scholarly platform. We see the current generation of VWs as a precursor of a future 3D Web, with a great transformative potential.

For more details, see the Research activity, Publications, or Links pages.

MICA is supported in part by the NSF grant HCC-0917814.

MICA Events

Our public popular talks are open to everybody.

Additional technical discussions and seminars are organized by the various working groups and collaborations.

Everybody can see the How to Join page for information about mailing lists and in-world groups where we send announcements of events.

• Upcoming Public Events lists the upcoming talks and public outreach events
• Popular Talks page lists a longer-term schedule and the links to the past talks
• MICA Events provides some additional information
• We are also hosting the Virtually Speaking Science (VSS) series
• We welcome any other groups who would like to use our StellaNova venue for any legitimate scholarly or educational purposes.