The Joint Research Institute of Metaverse and Virtual-Real Interaction was formally established by a group of institutions and tech firms recently in Shanghai.
The new entity represents another important academic research institution in the field of the metaverse, after a joint innovation center for the metaverse was established in Shanghai in early June.
The newest research institute was jointly established by Fudan University, China Mobile’s Migu, Tencent Interactive Entertainment, Huawei, Epic Games and other institutions. Peking University, Renmin University, Zhejiang University, Nanjing University and other well-known universities are the research co-construction units for the institute.
Zhao Xing, a professor at the Big Data Research Institute at Fudan University and the National Intelligent Evaluation and Governance Experimental Base, has been named as the dean of the new institute. Zhao said that Shanghai has the experience of digital transformation and construction, and has strong support of metaverse talent, technology, industry, urban environment and consumption capacity – these constitute the core reasons for why the institute is located in Shanghai.
After China issued its “14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development” in January this year, new digital formats have been laid out all over the country, among which metaverse is one of the most important emerging growth points. Since the beginning of this year, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Xiamen and other places have all launched their own metaverse development policies.
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In July, Shanghai took the lead in releasing an action plan for cultivating the metaverse throughout the next three years. According to the plan, by 2025, the scale of metaverse-related industries in Shanghai will reach 350 billion yuan ($51 billion), which will drive the scale of the software and information services industry to exceed 1.5 trillion yuan and the scale of the electronic information manufacturing industry to exceed 550 billion yuan.
