UVa scientists marry humanities, technology

University of Virginia researchers will begin using supercomputers early next year to construct digital 3-D models of historic architecture, ancient art and artifacts.

David Koller, assistant director of UVa’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, spent the last decade using laser and light scanners to measure historical sites and objects from around the world.

Now, some data gathered on those trips will be put into supercomputers that can process it into models that traditionally would overwork the capacity of a personal computer.

Koller said scientists have long been trained to incorporate supercomputer analysis into their research, but for humanists the idea has begun taking hold only recently.

Although Koller is not typical of other humanists because he is a computer scientist who has incorporated humanities research into his work.

He said he hopes his work leads to reducing the amount of time researchers spend in the lab poring over what they’ve collected in the field.

For instance: An archaeologist uncovers multiple fragments that she believes may have once been a pot. From there, she scans each fragment and puts the data into a computer that uses algorithms to reconstruct them into a single object.

That could replace the trial-and-error method usually relied on to complete jigsaw puzzles, Koller said.

He also sees where constructing 3-D models could aid in restoring statues or architecture that has been scanned and modeled but later damaged.

Bernard Frischer is director of the Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities and said Koller’s work also allows for Internet access to statues and historical sites.

In the case of statues Koller has scanned, it will also allow a person to get closer to a piece than if the person were actually inside the museum housing it. Close enough to see the “tool marks,” as Frischer puts it.

UVa researchers will have 500,000 hours of access to supercomputers located in Berkeley, Calif. The computers are maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy and will allow UVa researchers to input data remotely.

The hours on the supercomputers come as part of collaboration between the Department of Energy and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Tufts University and the University of Southern California, San Diego, were also given supercomputer time for humanities projects.

“[The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities] has a long history of innovative and collaborative work bringing technology and the humanities together,” Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endow-ment for the Humanities, said in an e-mail. “We are excited to see how the use of supercomputers will benefit the institute’s study of ancient artifacts and architecture.”