vailsymposium

Brent Seales is the Alumni Professor Computer Science at the University of Kentucky (UK). His research program applies techniques in imaging and visualization to damaged heritage materials such as manuscripts and inscriptions.

Seales and his research team received international acclaim after extracting text from within a damaged ancient scroll using software for virtual unwrapping based on micro-CT scans. The scroll, which was excavated at En-Gedi in 1972 and was too damaged to be physically opened, is now known to be the only biblical scroll ever to be found within an excavated synagogue. The recovery of readable Hebrew text – identified as the book of Leviticus – from within the still-unopened scroll, was recognized by Christianity Today magazine as the most significant discovery in biblical archaeology of 2015.

His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Google.  In 2015 he received the UK Alumni Great Teacher award and UK’s Southeastern Conference (SEC) Faculty Achievement award, and in 2016 he was named a University of Kentucky Research Professor.

Seales earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has held research positions at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, UNC Chapel Hill, Google (Paris) and the Getty Conservation Institute.