Dear All, IEEE TCSN is pleased to invite you for the invited talk on *"**The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Metaverse**" by Prof. **Pan Hui* *on Nov. 29th 2022 from 10:00 AM Hong Kong Time (Nov. 28th 9pm EST).* This talk is an endeavor of IEEE TCSN focusing on enhancing the awareness of trending topics to the community. Title: *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Metaverse* Speaker: *Prof. Pan Hui *(IEEE Fellow, ACM Distinguished Scientist, International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Academia Europaea member) Date: * 29 November 2022 (Tuesday)* Time: *10:00 AM HKT (UTC+08:00)* *(Check your local time here: **https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/ <http://enotice.ieee.org/link.cfm?r=IoDJNoL-xQC97aLHLaRfMA~~&pe=GxIJ2JMz2owXMXnxthjQlsxXd_r6-GHoYpQ4fN-U6uEzgPJfNo7nIZuvTj2SMQkXla5etaDdUm2MGDsC8X4fkA~~&t=uydO706YNZG4FGJ2CjnG_w~~>)* *Zoom link: * *https://rebrand.ly/HitchhikerGuideToMetaverse <https://rebrand.ly/HitchhikerGuideToMetaverse>* *Abstract*: We envision in the future the virtual world will mix and co-exist with the physical world in such an immersive way that we cannot tell what is real and what is virtual. We will live and interact with the virtual objects that are blended into our environments with advanced holographic technology or with high-quality head-mounted displays and lose the virtuality boundary. We call such a new reality Surreality. Our vision of “metaverse” is a multi-world. There are multiple virtual worlds developed by different technology companies and there is also the Surreality where real and virtual merged. While the metaverse may seem futuristic, catalysed by emerging technologies such as Extended Reality, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence, the digital “big bang” of our cyberspace is not far away. This talk aims to offer a comprehensive framework that examines the latest metaverse development under the dimensions of state-of-the-art technologies and metaverse ecosystems, illustrates the possibility of the digital “big bang”, and proposes a concrete research agenda for the development of the metaverse. *Speaker Bio: * Pan Hui is a Chair Professor of Computational Media and Arts and Director of the Center for Metaverse and Computational Creativity at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), and a Chair Professor of Emerging Interdisciplinary Areas at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is also the Nokia Chair in Data Science at the University of Helsinki. He received his PhD from the Computer Laboratory at University of Cambridge, and both his Bachelor and MPhil degrees from the University of Hong Kong. He was an adjunct Professor of social computing and networking at Aalto University, Finland, and a Distinguished Scientist at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories (T-labs), Germany. His industrial profile also includes his research at Intel Research Cambridge, UK and Thomson Research Paris, France. Pan Hui is an expert in Augmented Reality and Mobile Computing, with more than 400 research papers, 30 patents, and over 24,000 citations. He is an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of Academia Europaea, an IEEE Fellow, and an ACM Distinguished Scientist. We look forward to your participation. [image: Prof. Pan Hui_13_plain.jpg]