Do string theorists research emergent spacetime as part of a TOE?

[jdstokes]

At the end of David Gross' UC Berkeley public lecture on string theory he mentions that emergent spacetime may play an important role in TOE.

Are there any string theorists researching this?

 

[atyy]

"To summarize, AdS/CFT duality is an example of emergent gravity, emergent spacetime, and emergent general coordinate invariance. But it is also an example of emergent strings!"

Gauge/gravity duality
Gary T. Horowitz, Joseph Polchinski
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0602037