Magic Leap Mixed Realty Campus Tour

The first project to come out of the UM-Magic Leap Project Alexandria collaboration is “The U Experience” a mixed reality tour of the Coral Gables campus. The team working on this Magic Leap experience celebrated on Friday, August 16th at the Newman Alumni Center. The project was completed in time for the President’s Celebration for New Students taking place on Saturday, and being offered to 2,800 incoming freshman.

Project Alexandria

Back on November 12, 2018, at an event at the School of Architecture’s new Thomas P. Murphy Design Studio Building, UM President Julio Frenk, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz, and UM Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Jeffrey Duerk discussed how an alliance with Magic Leap (which they called “Project Alexandria”) would transform learning and make spatial computing an important part of the UM experience.

“This partnership is about the campus taking the field of computing and running with it. We hope UM can be the global dominant player academically,” said Abovitz during the discussion with Frenk. “There is a power of place,” said Frenk. “If you look at history, most major cities were a product of chance. Alexandria in Egypt was selected on the basis of a strategic choice. It was meant to be a connector for the east and west. I think of Miami as the Alexandria of the 21st century.”

Abovitz said the focus of Project Alexandria is to turn UM into a “Magicverse” campus, a system of systems bridging the physical world and the digital world. The bridging of the two worlds will forge new ways to explore art, science, music, and other disciplines. “It is my hope that this project is going to allow us to reconnect the STEM disciplines with social sciences, the humanities, and artistic creation,” said Frenk. Abovitz believes the University of Miami will be a petri dish of how the technology will unfold in society. “I want Magic Leap to use the University as a laboratory,” said Abovitz. “That is what being immersed in a university is all about. We want to put the tools in the hands of students and faculty so they can put their thoughts into action.” [SOURCE: Shaping the Future of Education UM News (by Amanda Perez) https://features.miami.edu/2018/magic-leap/index.html?utm_source=ACAD-ALUM&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Magic+Leap&utm_term=Magic+Leap&utm_content=Magic+Leap]

The U Experience Magic Leap, University of Miami President's Celebration for New Students 2019

The U Experience Magic Leap, University of Miami President's Celebration for New Students 2019 with Sebastian the Ibis

The U Experience Team

(L to R: Some of the team members: Pedro Davila, Harold “Hal” Milenkovic, Maria del Carmen Aguilar Velez, Katlyn Aviles, Nick Tsinoremas, Ching-Hua Chuan, Kim Grinfeder, Chris Mader, Ijeoma Adele, and Michael Mannino.)

Special Thanks

Magic Leap Interactive Media Group:

Greg Tran (Principal Designer/Creative Director) OS Design Lead
Karen Stolzenberg (Senior Interaction Designer)
Brian Meaney (Senior Interaction Designer) UX team
Cole Heiner (Interaction Designer) IX designer, UCI, 3D animation
Diego Berta (Senior Director, Business Development – Technology Platform)

UM School of Communication:

Kim Grinfeder Founder and Director for the Interactive Media Program UX, UI design, Visualization
Ching-Hua Chuan Research Associate Professor of Interactive Media | Augmented Reality
Maria del Carmen Aguilar Velez MFA in Interactive Media candidate
Harold Milenkovic student Masters in Interactive Media (Unity and Magic Leap)
Katlyn Aviles student MFA in MP, PhD Interactive Storytelling
The Mixed Reality Student Team: Shing “Ryan” Cheng, Jiahao Zhou, Max Cacchione, Carolina Fernandez, Luis Armani Rodriguez

UM CCS: