The campuses will be part of MetaHKUST, a project spearheaded by two of the university's professors, MetaHKUST project lead Wang Yang and the director of the Center for Metaverse and Computational Creativity Pan Hui.
Students and faculty will later be able to generate their own avatars, NFTs, tokens and art works for use in the metaverse. They will also be able to receive their diplomas and transcripts as NFTs. “What we are striving to achieve here is the scaling up of technology to handle large-sized environments and massive multi-user experiences, which not only represents a primary challenge of our physical-digital vision, but also a key factor that differentiates MetaHKUST from other campuses’ metaverse initiatives,” he said.
With much of MetaHKUST’s work playing out on the new Guangzhou campus, it’s also part of growing interest in China around blockchain and metaverse technology. Despite a ban on cryptocurrencies, the metaverse has garnered interest and support at both the provincial and national level.