Unwrapping secrets 

What good is a treasure trove of ancient scrolls if no one can open them? Quite a lot, it turns out—just ask University of Kentucky Professor Brent Seales. 

Discovered in the 18th century, the Herculaneum papyri are a collection of more than 1,800 papyrus scrolls that were burned and carbonized when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. The collection represents the only complete library to survive intact from the classical world, but early attempts to open the charcoal-like lumps only destroyed them. 

Seales, a computer science professor at UK since 1991, applies advanced technology to ancient texts. Over the past two decades, he’s developed software enabling researchers to unwrap ancient scrolls virtually without needing to physically unfurl them, and has pioneered the use of machine learning to interpret results. 

In 2023, with funding from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Seales launched the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition that has awarded more than $1.7 million to researchers applying artificial intelligence to decipher passages from the Herculaneum scrolls. In 2025, Seales was awarded a prestigious European Research Council grant as part of an international team working to expand recovery of the Herculaneum papyri. In addition, Seales leads the EduceLab at UK, connecting students with heritage science. 

“I think Kentuckians are proud of the University of Kentucky, and of everything that the commonwealth here represents,” Seales says, noting that he’s been invited to speak about his work to the Big Blue Nation during halftime at basketball and football games. He sees his work as means of connecting the past and the present. 

“I have this idea about a kind of sacred bond between a writer and a reader,” he says. “The author can no longer speak for himself or herself. But the text, if we revive it, kind of repairs this bond that the author intended. … It is a kind of resurrection.”