The Vesuvius Challenge, an international AI competition, has declared its winners. The challenge involved virtually unwrapping a carbonized papyrus scroll from the ancient city of Herculaneum. The winning team, led by Youssef Nader, a biorobotics graduate student from Egypt, included Luke Farritor, a SpaceX intern and college student from Nebraska, and Julian Schilliger, a robotics student from Zurich. The team revealed 15 partial columns of hidden text within the scroll, known as PHerc.Paris4, owned by the Institut de France. The grand prize of $700,000 will be divided among the winners.
The Vesuvius Challenge was initiated in March 2023 by Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky. He partnered with EduceLab: A Digital Restoration Initiative, the Library of the Institut de France, and the Vesuvius Challenge founders. The competition aimed to bring together top talent in AI, virtual unwrapping, and papyrology to uncover texts hidden in the Herculaneum scrolls. The initial prize of $200,000 grew to $1 million due to contributions from over 30 individuals.