Intel Corporation, Nokia and the University of Oulu officially started out the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center today. It’ll hire about two dozen R&D professionals and become the latest member of Intel’s European Research Network, Intel Labs Europe.

Primarily the laboratory will conduct research to get different and compelling mobile user experiences that could leverage the quickly increasing capabilities of mobile devices. Creating interfaces that are much more similar to interactions in real life can allow experiences that are more natural and user-friendly, in the same way that modern games and movies tend to be more immersive via the use of realistic 3-D design.

The new lab is properly aligned using the MeeGo open source platform recently launched by Intel and Nokia. MeeGo provides the greatest freedom for developing new 3-D experiences on portable devices as much of the lab’s research activity will also be open source.

“The University of Oulu’s focus on future telecommunications solutions as well as electronics and photonics made it the perfect location for the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center,” says Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer and director of Intel Labs.

A different potential subject of research could look into technologies that allow displaying a 3-D hologram of the person you are discussing with on the mobile phone, a capability only found in science fiction videos today. Customers will feel more involved and engaged in relation to their mobile experience than with existing solutions.

“3-D technology could change the way we use our mobile devices and make our experiences with them much more immersive,” said Rich Green, Senior vice president and chief technical officer, Nokia. “Our new joint laboratory with Intel draws on the Oulu research community’s 3-D interface expertise, and over time will lay down some important foundations for future mobile experiences.”

The lab will be located at the Center for Internet Excellence at the University of Oulu, and will work closely with the Oulu Urban Living Labs, which supply a unique environment for sensor research, testing and piloting technological and social innovations. The Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center follows a successful industry and academia collaboration model similar to the ones of Intel Labs Barcelona and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Spain, the Intel Visual Computing Institute and the Saarland University in Germany or Intel Labs Berkeley at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States.