Biology in VR

Our goal is to provide an innovative and exciting approach for the understanding of cell biology, targeted at high school and undergraduate students. The environment will take the form of a virtual cell, containing cell structures and metabolic pathways, that students can enter, explore, and interact with. Meta!Blast will function on multiple platforms, from a video game, on a computer monitor or classroom projection screen, to an immersive virtual reality space, allowing maximum flexibility for use in various learning environments.

What the students will be doing: Metablast offers a wide variety interesting problems that can be developed for. We are interested in continued development of the user interface, artificial inteligence( integrating Fuzzy sets, baysian learning, A* path planning, etc), real time physics accelerated on a graphics chip( using Cuda, or GLSL), and many other things. We will focus on one of these with the students given interest and skill levels.

Website: http://virtualcellproject.vrac.iastate.edu/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

The Team