Disney Research, the innovation arm of Burbank, Calif.-based The Walt Disney Company, has vacated its research lab at the Collaborative Innovation Center on CMU’s Oakland campus.
Byron Spice, spokesman for CMU’s School of Computer Science, confirmed the move in an email.
5 comments:
I actually had no idea that Disney and CMU had human-computer labs for research jointly on our campus. So, although to me it won’t be that big of a loss, it most likely is for those students that were aware of this collaboration. The Entertainment Technology Center, a section of CMU, was an option to go visit as our first Susan Tsu project and when I went, every corner you turned was a look at a different iconic figure from Disney Movies. Disney, although they refused to speak about the matter, will still be collaborating with Carnegie Mellon students to create works that are at the cutting edge of the technology entertainment industry according to a CMU professor, so I would love to have the bragging rights of this school and say that Carnegie Mellon students worked on a famous Disney movie, so hopefully the move won’t stifle the relationship they’ve been creating since 2005.
I once tried to get into a study at the human-computer interaction center, but I don't think they wanted me, so it never panned out. Nevertheless, it was a pretty cool thing to have on campus, and I know several Of my classmates have gone and successfully participated in studies there. I don't think this marks the end of collaboration between disney and CMU, but even if it does, this school is always at the forefront of research anyways. I saw an ad on the bus the other day for a CMU study that involved studying young people under 18 who use smartphones. CMU is always doing a lot of research at a very high level, as is expected of high-level universities across the world. At the same time, I feel as if we at the school of drama are also operating at a very high level compared to other places, and we don't often give ourselves credit for that. We don't need Disney to elevate us, we should be the ones elevating Disney.
It’s super cool that CMU has such a close Disney connection. I think that it is particularly fitting with the movie Big Hero Six and the emphasis on robotics. I can definitely see the connection to the micro robots that held up most of the plot of the film. The other super cool thing that CMU/Disney has made is the 3D capture software. Particularly in video games recently, there has been a huge spring to use real actors to capture characters in the game. One of the most notable and well done is The Last of Us. One of the last scenes in the game is incredibly realistic, and it makes more sense once you watch the behind the scenes footage of real actors acting in a huge green set, while wearing all black and little balls. I can’t wait to see how all of this plays into VR and Augmented reality games.
“The Collaborative Innovation Center — originally a project between CMU, the Regional Industrial Development Corporation, the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the state — was built in 2005 to make space for university-related tech companies in the region, as well as corporate partners looking to work with the university to design commercial products and concepts.” Is it bad the I had absolutely no cle this existed? Like I knew that the school of drama has a fairly good relationship with Disney but I honestly didn’t know we had a lab dedicated to computer sciences. With “Disney Research, which is based in Glendale, Calif., studies human-computer interaction, machine learning, data analytics, robotics, visual computing, and materials and fabrication,” not only does that sound really cool for what it does, it’s kinda cool that we had a computer lab working with Disney. I am honestly kinda sad to hear that we lost this lab.
I only learned that Carnegie Mellon had a Disney affiliated research lab on campus last week during a costumes stagecraft class, and I can't believe it is already closing! It is really interesting to me to be going to a school like CMU that has so many arms out reaching into different corporate organizations, and as the article quoted, "Corporate partnerships are highly valuable to Carnegie Mellon University and the companies with which we work. Together, we propel cutting-edge research and bring groundbreaking innovations to market,". This idea is one that makes a lot of sense for an educational institution that really wants its student to be propelled into the professional world as quickly and thoroughly as possible. I know that in the School of Drama, the idea of professionalism even in college is one that is also important, and I think it's cool to see that that is the case throughout the University as a whole as well. I am a little sad that I never got to see the Disney lab, and hope that CMU continues to procure relationships with companies like Disney in the future!
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