{"id":114645,"date":"2025-08-03T03:43:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T03:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/114645\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T03:43:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T03:43:16","slug":"kennesaw-state-launches-center-for-interactive-media-to-drive-innovation-in-vr-gaming-and-digital-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/114645\/","title":{"rendered":"Kennesaw State launches Center for Interactive Media to drive innovation in VR, gaming, and digital storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[The following article by Darius Goodman, with photo by Matt Yung, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kennesaw.edu\/news\/stories\/2025\/center-interactive-media-drive-innovation-vr-gaming-storytelling.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">first appeared on the Kennesaw State University website<\/a>, republished with permission]<\/p>\n<p>To meet the growing demand of the $380 billion film, gaming, and immersive technology industry, Kennesaw State has launched the Center for Interactive Media, designed to accelerate innovation in storytelling, virtual reality, and user-interface technology.<\/p>\n<p>Led by Assistant Professor of English Victoria Lagrange, the center will emphasize user-experience research that helps designers and product teams understand user needs, engage in immersive storytelling, and uncover real-world applications of interactive tools.<\/p>\n<p>Among the projects that the center will be working on is creating a digitized model of Georgia that can be used to improve traffic or energy consumption in the state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom hurricanes to cyberattacks, the Center for Interactive Media\u2019s ambitious plan to build a digital twin of Georgia will empower responders, planners, and policymakers to see what is coming, act with clarity, and protect lives before danger strikes,\u201d said Executive Vice President for Research Karin Scarpinato.<\/p>\n<p>The Center for Interactive Media has established five goals, which include:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Advancing interdisciplinary research in interactive media.<\/li>\n<li>Developing and evaluating immersive experiences through applied research.<\/li>\n<li>Integrating ethical, human-centered AI into interactive systems.<\/li>\n<li>Bridging research and practice through industry and community partnerships.<\/li>\n<li>Training the next generation of researchers in digital innovation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The center will also address the growing gap in Georgia\u2019s digital economy by integrating human-centered, user-experience research, ethical artificial intelligence (AI) design, and immersive media development into a unified research and development pipeline.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Center for Interactive Media is strategically aligned with high-growth commercial sectors,\u201d said Assistant Vice President of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Chris Cornelison. \u201cCollectively, the U.S. film, music, video game, and digital entertainment industries represent a market exceeding $380 billion annually. In Georgia, these industries have seen substantial expansion, positioning the state as a national leader and creating significant opportunities for KSU researchers, scholars, and graduates to contribute through innovation, collaboration, and workforce development.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Plans for the center include building a physical space with a virtual and augmented reality room, a game studio, motion capture and sound room, and a focus room for user experience. In addition, the CIM will establish a presence in the metaverse, a virtual reality environment. Lagrange also seeks faculty members from across campus interested in bringing their expertise to the center.<\/p>\n<p>As a case in point, Lagrange is already collaborating with Associate Professor of Engineering Mahyar Amirgholy on an ambitious plan to create a digitized model of the entire state of Georgia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis digital twin model will be particularly valuable for planning, operational decision-making, and policy development,\u201d said Amirgholy, who teaches civil engineering in KSU\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kennesaw.edu\/spceet\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology<\/a>. \u201cIt will contribute to the development of more responsive and resilient smart urban systems, such as transportation networks, communication infrastructure, and the energy grid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The center\u2019s interdisciplinary approach encourages collaboration across media disciplines to pursue funding for its work and to build industry and community partnerships.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs an institution with a high level of research, one of our goals is to promote interdisciplinary research and go after external funding,\u201d said Lagrange, a faculty member in KSU\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kennesaw.edu\/radow\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Radow College of Humanities and Social Sciences<\/a>. \u201cOne of the ways we can do that is by partnering with people who have different skills than the ones you have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[The following article by Darius Goodman, with photo by Matt Yung, first appeared on the Kennesaw State University&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":114646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[745,72044,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-114645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-kennesaw-state-university","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114962773076651891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}