The people and partnerships behind our work

Meet Us

Founded in 2006, EMEL is a 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
Roger L. Easton, Jr.
Professor, Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
Thomas Rieger
Chief of the Collections Digitization Division (retired), US Library of Congress
Professor of Practice, Rochester Institute of Technology, Museum Studies Program and Cultural Heritage Imaging Lab
Giulia Rossetto
Assistant Professor, University of Vienna, Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Agamemnon Tselikas
Director, Historical and Paleographical Archive, National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation
Peter Marshall
Business analyst, IBM and EMEL information technology advisor
David Kelbe
Principal Scientist, Centre for Space Science Technology, New Zealand

Alliances

EMEL works with St. Catherine’s Monastery to document its manuscript collections and make them more accessible for study. Together with UCLA Library, the collaboration has supported the Sinai Palimpsests Project and the Sinai Library Digitization Project, connecting specialist imaging with the monastery’s stewardship of its collections.

UCLA Library and EMEL collaborate on the imaging, documentation, and digital publication of cultural heritage materials. Projects at Sinai, Verona, and other locations, bring together EMEL’s imaging expertise and UCLA’s digital-library resources, helping turn complex capture datasets into research collections that can be preserved and shared.

EMEL collaborates with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures on the scientific examination of manuscripts. Shared work includes the Palimpsests in Danger project and X-ray fluorescence data collection for the Vienna Basilica Palimpsests, bringing complementary analytical methods to the investigation of obscured writing and manuscript materials.

EMEL works with imaging scientists from Rochester Institute of Technology to document manuscripts and examine obscured text. Multiple multispectral imaging campaigns have brought specialists from both organizations together to capture high-resolution data from damaged or re-written manuscripts, supporting further scientific and scholarly investigation.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki participates in the Vatopedi Palimpsests Project alongside the Vatopedi monastery, and EMEL. The collaboration combines manuscript study with multispectral imaging to investigate erased writing in the Monastery’s collection, with the aim of publishing images and associated data for wider research access.

Vatopedi Monastery collaborates with EMEL to investigate the earlier writing preserved in its palimpsest manuscripts. With participation from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the project combines the monastery’s custodianship with specialist imaging and scholarly study, working toward digital access to the recovered texts and their supporting images.

Among other common activities, the Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona works with EMEL and UCLA Library through the Palimpsests in Danger project. Focusing on manuscripts affected by historical chemical treatments, the collaboration compares multispectral imaging with other scientific techniques to determine how obscured information can be recovered and documented for scholarly examination.

Among other activities, EMEL’s collaboration with the Museum of the Bible centres on the Codex Climaci Rescriptus and other palimpsests, whose reused parchment preserves earlier writing beneath later texts. Imaging campaigns have brought together EMEL, the Lazarus Project, and other specialists to document the manuscript and provide image evidence for continuing research.

EMEL and the Lazarus Project share a commitment to recovering obscured writing through spectral imaging. They collaborate on selected imaging projects and grant development, including work on the Codex Climaci Rescriptus and participation in Palimpsests in Danger, connecting technical capture and processing with scholarly research questions.

EMEL collaborates with researchers associated with the Sorbonne University on the imaging and study of palimpsests. In the Paris Palimpsests Project, Victor Gysembergh and Emanuel Zingg led the scholarly work while EMEL provided multispectral imaging of manuscripts held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The University of Vienna has supported the scholarly study and dissemination of results from the Sinai Palimpsests Project. With the participation of Claudia Rapp, Giulia Rossetto, and many others, the collaboration connects manuscript imaging with the interpretation of erased texts, including support for the project’s Vienna conference and consultation on the Sinai collection.

EMEL works with the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Byzantine Research Division on the recovery of erased texts in Vienna palimpsests. The collaboration combines spectral imaging and image processing with specialist manuscript research, including work on the Vienna Herodian palimpsest and the integration of complementary imaging techniques.