ZIBS Metaverse Campus was inaugurated on April 27.
Business leaders and experts including Professor HE Lianzhen, Vice President of Zhejiang University, Professor Han Seung-soo, President of the 56th Session of the UN General Assembly, Cai Jin, Executive Director and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Sing Tao News Corporation Limited, Professor BEN Shenglin, Dean of ZIBS, and Hung-Yi Chen, Director of ZIBS Metaverse Campus, attended the inauguration ceremony—one of the events to mark the 125th anniversary of Zhejiang University. An audience of over 300 Chinese and foreign people watched the ceremony online.
Vice President HE Lianzhen, on behalf of Zhejiang University, offered her warm congratulations and heartfelt thanks to ZIBS. She pointed out that we are faced with new opportunities and challenges. At Zhejiang University and ZIBS Today, we are fortunate to witness the advent of a new era for online education. It is an era of great revolution. We should explore new ways and apply cutting-edge technology to build the Metaverse Campus. This will deliver immersive, interactive, and high-quality business education to students from around the world and push back the boundaries of higher education.
Professor Han Seung-soo noted that considerable efforts are being taken to explore Metaverse application. Institutions of higher education should be forward-looking, seize opportunities and embrace the Metaverse with a positive and open mind. System platforms, teaching organization, and learning resources should make education smart, interactive and virtual and bring students real-life experiences. This will undoubtedly create new opportunities for higher education hard hit by the pandemic and produce outstanding talent who meet the needs of our time.
On behalf of the ZIBS team, Professor BEN Shenglin then welcomed all the guests and audience attending the ceremony online. The establishment of the Metaverse Campus marks yet another milestone in ZIBS's story as it enters a new stage of development. He emphasized that since the establishment of ZIBS, the school has always adhered to the 5 "I" principle: international, interdisciplinary, innovative, inclusive and integrative. ZIBS aims to develop into a world-class business school. The establishment of the Metaverse Campus is a significant step towards our goal. A journey of one thousand miles begins with each single step. We look forward to embarking on a new journey with more of our fellow travelers and creating a brilliant future together.
Hung-Yi Chen, Director of ZIBS Metaverse Campus, said that he and his transnational team created an immersive virtual world. The Metaverse overcomes temporal and spatial limitations and redefines the communication model. He also thanked the deans of the top business schools and the industry representatives from around the world for their support. The education and business model of the Metaverse has infinite potential. We hope to deliver the best experiences in business education and studies and work with the world's top experts at the ceremony and roundtable forum to work out innovative solutions for the new era.
Cai Jin, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Sing Tao News Corporation Limited, added that Sing Tao is vigorously implementing the "dual drive" model to build a more competitive multimedia platform that merges traditional media with new media. The joint efforts by Sing Tao and ZIBS to build the Metaverse Campus are aimed at promoting mass media and higher education and assisting Chinese culture in its bid to go global.
Giuliano Noci, Vice Chancellor of the Chinese Territorial Pole at the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy, Fiona Devine, Head of the Alliance Manchester Business School at The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, John Finch, Dean of Adam Smith Business School of University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, José M. Martínez-Sierra, General Director of the Barcelona School of Management at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain, and Alvin Graylin, President of HTC China, attended the ceremony and the roundtable forum. They expressed interest and hope with regards to ZIBS's Metaverse-centered explorations at the forefront of education. According to them, with the help of Internet applications and social forms characterized by the integration of multiple emerging technologies and the blending of the real and virtual worlds, the Metaverse Campus is in a position to expand real-world technology to provide immersive learning experiences for students of the future, help educators and researchers overcome temporal and spatial limitations in a whole-new interactive way, and achieve barrier-free communication. Considering that globalization is spawning all kinds of opportunities and challenges, new attempts in business education look set to take on great practical significance and become worthy of exploration.
ZIBS will work towards three major goals through its Metaverse Campus:
Immersive Class: a class built in virtual reality for teachers and students from around the world that may redefine online learning and international academic exchanges;
Metaverse Exhibition Hall: a VR exhibition hall combining with classroom learning, built in cooperation with enterprises for students to understand the actual industry environment;
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Road Show: a Metaverse tutoring platform built through industry-university cooperation for ensuring success for start-ups.
In addition, we are also preparing the ZIBS Metanomics Research Center, which is expected to open up a new chapter in higher business education based on the theory and practice of the Metaverse Campus.
The Metaverse event series will feature Lesly Goh, former CTO of the World Bank, Léon Laulusa, Executive Vice-President, Dean for Academic Affairs and International Relations, Dean of Warsaw campus at ESCP Business School, Mauro Guillen, Dean of Cambridge Judge Business School, Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, among other heavyweight guests, who will deliver fascinating theme lectures at ZIBS Metaverse Campus.
Please click the following link to register for the lectures: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/84742116294. You will be notified about ways of participation before the event if registration is successful.
(Our thanks go to Sing Tao for providing VR equipment for the attending guests and Meta Intelligence and M2 Studio for their technical support.)
