University of Gävle prepares students for entry into industry

The Creat ive Program was established in 1995 at the University of G~vle.The University of G~vle is located 160 km nor th of Stockholm and, with I 0, 000 students, belongs to the group of middle-size Swedish universit ies. G~vle is a coastal t own w i th 90,000 inhabitants and the home of Ericsson Radio Systems, the Swedish state agency for land, natural resources and geography and Sandviken, one of the most advanced producers of industry tools in the wor ld.The new Ericsson research center for G3 mobile telephony has just been built, hosting 300 researchers. The Creat ive Program started as a 60point program dealing with different aspects of creativity in computer science. From the s ta r t , the p r o g r a m was a imed t o w a r d students that already had at least 60 points in computer science. It is the first program to cover s tudies in c o m p u t e r an ima t ion , programming for multimedia and gaming and work with special effects and digital postproduction in Sweden and Scandinavia. It soon became the premier program in computer an ima t ion , d ig i ta l p o s t p r o d u c t i o n and programming for gaming fields. Creative Program research is conducted through the Creative Media Lab (CML), which has the goal of connect ing educat ion and industry through direct corporate agreement. The research projects described in this article are administered by the Creative Program (except for theVirtual Mummy project which is administered by Uppsala University).There are several corporate agreements that exist around the Creative Program.The most important one is wi th SUN, made two years ago when we became the first Java campus in Sweden. The University of G~vle and the Creative Program collaborate with numerous universit ies in Sweden and abroad but the most i m p o r t a n t co l l abo ra t i on is w i t h Uppsala University. Uppsala Universi ty is a natural partner as it is just 80 kilometers from G~ivle. Uppsala University is the oldest university in Scandinavia wi th 37,000 students and offers great research diversity. Since 2001, Uppsala Univers i ty and Un ivers i ty of G~vle have shared a p ro fessor 's chai r in c o m p u t e r graphics with 80 percent in G~vle connected to the Creative Program and the Creative Media Lab.