Outstanding service of expert individuals

Meet Us

Founded 18 years ago, EMEL is a dedicated non-profit organization committed to preserving cultural heritage through advanced scientific imaging and cutting-edge technology. We continuously innovate, embracing new ideas and approaches to push the boundaries of heritage preservation.

How we work

EMEL leaders identify manuscripts (or other historical materials), which are inaccessible to scholars due to geographical, political, or technological barriers, and develop projects to make them digitally accessible for study.

EMEL often leads projects from their start (grant writing) to their conclusion (publication); or we can provide specialized imaging services to an existing project.

EMEL welcomes project proposals and often invites a scholar or scientist to serve as an external project director.

Staff

Michael Phelps
Executive Director
Damianos Kasotakis
Director of Imaging
Susan Marshall
Associate
Jayne Bray
Business Manager

Board of Directors

Michael Phelps, Chair
Executive Director, EMEL
Claudia Rapp, Secretary
Professor, University of Vienna, Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Randy R. Merritt, Treasurer
Attorney-at-Law, specializing in intellectual property
Associate Beach Law Group, LLP
Dimitrios Antsos
Technology Project Manager (Level II), NASA—Jet Propulsion Laboratory;
Lecturer, California Technology Institute
Matthew McGovern
Chief Financial Officer
Principal Silver Pine Energy

Advisory Board

Keith Knox
Independent imaging scientist and EMEL chief scientific advisor
Giulia Rossetto
Assistant Professor, University of Vienna, Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Peter Marshall
Business analyst, IBM and EMEL information technology advisor
David Kelbe
Principal Scientist, Centre for Space Science Technology, New Zealand
Athanasios Antonopoulos
Faculty member, University of Athens, Social Theology and Religion Department
Agamemnon Tselikas
Director, Historical and Paleographical Archive, National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation

Alliances

EMEL enjoys a relationship of collaboration and mutual consultation with St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai. St. Catherine’s Monastery, EMEL, and the UCLA Library collaborated in the Sinai Palimpsests Project, which used spectral imaging to recover erased texts from the monastery’s many palimpsests. The Monastery, EMEL, and the UCLA Library are now collaborating in the Sinai Library Digitization Project which is digitizing the Monastery’s unparalleled manuscript collection beginning with its Arabic and Syriac manuscripts.

EMEL and the UCLA Library benefit from a strategic alliance to develop projects of mutual interest.  These projects focus on the scientific imaging, documentation, and publication of important, and often inaccessible, cultural heritage materials.

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Both EMEL and the Lazarus Project are using spectral imaging to recover obscured text in manuscripts and historical documents. EMEL and the Lazarus Project are partnering in selected projects and grant development.

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The University of Vienna provided funding and in-kind support to the Sinai Palimpsests Project Vienna Conference, and under the leadership of Dr. Claudia Rapp, Professor of Byzantine Studies, continues to consult with EMEL in the documentation and interpretation of the palimpsests of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai.

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