W. Brent Seales is the Stanley and Karen Pigman Chair of Heritage Science and professor of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky. He is the founder of the Heritage Science research lab (EduceLab) at the University, which applies techniques in machine learning and data science to the digital restoration of damaged materials. Seales also cofounded the Vesuvius Challenge, an international contest with the goal to virtually unwrap Herculaneum scrolls. He has had notable success working with challenging, damaged materials, including the scroll from En-Gedi (Leviticus), the Morgan MS M.910 (The Acts of the Apostles), and PHerc.Paris.3 and 4 (Philodemus / Epicureanism).
His breakthrough work on the scroll from En-Gedi received international recognition and was featured in Science Advances, The New York Times, Le Monde, and the Times of London.
