---
title: "Brent Seales"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Brent Seales"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI)","virtual unwrapping","Vesuvius Challenge","Gabelsberger shorthand","EduceLab"]
---


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 [[entity-nat-friedman|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]]