Numedeon Inc. is a privately held company based in Pasadena, California, that since 1999 has been developing immersive online digital learning technology. Best known for creating the children's educational web site "Whyville"(www.whyville.net), Numedeon has also developed a number of other immersive online learning environments for other demographics and purposes. Numedeon was founded by Dr. James M. Bower and several of his students and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology.  Whyville was launched in 1999 on the Numedeon platform as an educational Internet site geared towards children aged 8–14 to engage its users in learning about a broad range of topics, including science, business, art and geography. Whyville has a registered user base of over 7 million.  The technology covered by the patents relates to computer systems that are networked together that provide users with an immersive online community.  This tremendously interesting technology has applicability to the online learning and gaming fields.  In January 2015, Numedeon establish Virtual Worlds IP Inc. (“VWIP”) as a subsidiary company specifically to manage Numedeon's accumulated intellectual property and also to form joint ventures with Numedeon's partners to launch new products based on Numedeon's technology. Numedeon Inc. built and manages Whyville.net as well as several other virtual immersive worlds. Numedeon's patent protected game-based immersive world engine, NICE, has also been used to build and manage several other virtual immersive worlds. Numedeon's virtual community management system (patent pending) is generally regarded as one of the most effective on the Internet. Numedeon has pioneered many aspects of on-line immersive worlds, including communication and economic structures, community management, new forms if immersive sponsorship and marketing, as well as game-based learning.