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A digital institute with global ambitions |
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The NTU International Workshop on IDM Research provides the perfect setting for the launch of the university's latest Interactive & Digital Media (IDM) initiative – the Institute for Media Innovation.
 In case you haven't noticed, the dawn of IDM is upon us. From networking and the Internet to medical applications and gaming, IDM has become embedded in our daily lives.
Yet this revolutionary field – driven by a heady union of science, technology and art – remains relatively unknown by those outside it, even as its frontiers continue to expand. These were among the critical issues that the world's top IDM practitioners grappled with at the inaugural NTU International Workshop on IDM Research, held from 29 to 30 April.
A workshop for the world
 Bringing together such leading lights as Prof Martin Reiser, Prof Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Mr Gerfried Stocker, Prof CC Jay Kuo, Prof Jeffrey Shaw and Mr Herbert Tillman, the event highlighted the central role of IDM in improving the way we live, and its growing importance as a subject of academic research.
"I am pleased to look out into the audience and see so many representatives of the international community here today," noted NTU Provost Prof Bertil Andersson in his opening address. "The heaviest critical mass in IDM is in this very room, and I am looking forward to the discourse to come."
This sentiment was echoed by the two keynote speakers, Mr Michael Yap, Deputy CEO of Singapore's Media Development Authority, and Prof Reiser of the renowned Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Mr Yap gave the audience an overview of Singapore's wide-ranging IDM initiatives while Prof Reiser, in a far-ranging address, explained how we are on the cusp of a revolution in interactivity – a fitting prelude to the exciting panel sessions that followed.
Of virtual humans and future media
 As a field, IDM resembles nothing so much as a giant toybox, one in which media content research, second/third life and intelligent agents are only the latest in a series of (potentially) life-changing ideas.
The workshop's four panel sessions were centred on the themes of 'Virtual Human 3.0,' 'Ar[t]ech,' 'Futuretech' and 'Media Convergence,' and allowed the assembly of international artists, researchers and programmers to share their experiences working on IDM's distant frontiers.
In his remarks at the closing plenary session, Prof Shaw, Founding Co-director for iCinema at the University of New South Wales, captured the mood of promise and discovery inherent in the field. "IDM is a very open territory of research, and probably one of the most important research fields for society at the moment," he said. "It is a territory where a certain amount of risk-taking is fundamental, and where a convergence of creative and scientific effort will give unexpected and interesting results."
Catching the digital wave with IMI
The workshop was also the perfect platform for NTU to launch the Institute for Media Innovation (IMI), an initiative to take the university's IDM efforts to the next level. "IDM is something that is changing our lives dramatically," noted Prof Andersson. "Our ambition is to create an environment where content and technology can coexist and develop."
 The IMI will build on NTU's strengths in engineering, science, business, the arts and education, providing a common platform for inter-disciplinary research groups at NTU to come together and make new discoveries. It will also serve as a conduit for the world to access the university's range of IDM offerings.
NTU, the only university in Singapore incorporating Schools of Engineering
and of Art, Design & Media, has established strengths in IDM, reflected in achievements such as its tie-up with a major Japanese anime company, a first in Singapore. The launch of IMI is in line with national efforts, as Singapore has identified IDM as a strategic R&D area.
The IMI will be supported by 100 researchers drawn from NTU's schools, and will boast an academic programme that accommodates 10 PhD students and a visiting professorship. In addition to Prof Andersson and NTU Senior Science Officer Mr Tony Mayer, the IMI's efforts will be driven by a team of talents that includes Prof Reiser; Prof Shaw; Assoc Prof Russell Pensyl of NTU's Interaction & Entertainment Research Centre; and Prof Seah Hock Soon of NTU's School of Computer Engineering.
As with all things digital, plans for the IMI are moving forward quickly, guided by the institute's focus on innovations in entertainment, education, health and medicine, lifestyle, and business. Among the IMI team's immediate objectives are to review key IDM projects and pockets of research across NTU, and organising an upcoming workshop on IDM and education.
With more initiatives to come by year's end, IMI looks set to catch the digital wave that continues to change our lives in fundamental ways.
© Corporate Communications Office
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