Hot on the heels of their MeeGo mobile OS effort, Intel and Nokia are to open a joint research center in partnership with the University of Oulu in Finland. It will employ “about two dozen R&D professionals” and become the latest member of Intel’s European Research Network, Intel Labs Europe.

The Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center will initially conduct research for “new and compelling mobile user experiences”, such as creating interfaces that are more similar to interactions in the real world, with a particular emphasis on 3D graphics, something that the university is already focused on.

The press release also gives a hat tip to MeeGo, the open source Linux-based mobile OS being developed by the two companies, suggesting that he new lab is “well aligned” with MeeGo which provides “the greatest flexibility for developing new 3-D experiences on mobile devices as much of the lab’s research activity will also be open source.”

What other experiences might the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center develop? There’s mention of the stuff of science fiction movies, such as “technologies that allow displaying a 3-D hologram of the person you are talking to on the phone.”

Nice.

The lab itself 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 provide “a unique environment for sensor research, testing and piloting technological and social innovations.”