Virtual Worlds Forum

A team of researchers at the University of Kansas has secured an $850,000 grant from Microsoft Research to investigate biodiversity changes in complex environments, including Mexico's cloud forests. The aim is to forecast how environmental change is affecting plants and animals in the forests, and one component will be building a virtual world to test out the researchers' ecological modelling.

"The virtual world will give us ways to test tools we have been developing for 10 years. We want to create a very complex simulation, not just a beautiful envelope with nothing inside."

I've written on this blog about several grants for pure virtual worlds research, but it's interesting to see virtual worlds also coming under the umbrella of wider projects, complementing other kinds of academic research by acting as a testing ground for theories and forecasts. (via Kansas City InfoZine)