Brent Seales

University of Kentucky computer scientist. Developed "virtual unwrapping" — reading a manuscript from a volumetric scan instead of physically opening it — over roughly twenty years, first proved publicly on the 2015 En-Gedi Scroll, then formalized as the NSF-funded EduceLab. Co-founded the 2023 Vesuvius Challenge with Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, crowdsourcing the ink-detection models that later read a fully carbonized, never-opened Herculaneum scroll. As of a December 2025 announcement, leads Schmidt Sciences' Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) — a national AI-humanities funding institute that is the direct institutional heir to his own scroll-reading research, now backing projects like AI-assisted recognition of Gabelsberger shorthand.

References

• claim-virtual-unwrapping-first-proved-on-2015-en-gedi-scroll
• claim-pherc-1667-first-herculaneum-scroll-read-unopened
• claim-nat-friedman-funded-vesuvius-challenge-from-pandemic-curiosity
• claim-seales-2016-en-gedi-paper-cites-mocella-rival-claim
• claim-havi-awarded-11m-across-23-teams-dec-2025
• observation-havi-extends-seales-ai-decipherment-to-illegible-shorthand