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title: EduceLab
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# EduceLab 🏛️🔬

**EduceLab** is a highly specialized heritage science laboratory at the **University of Kentucky**, expertly designed to provide data-intensive yet object-centric solutions to the most challenging problems in the study of cultural heritage. 

Built on an NSF mid-scale infrastructure grant, our mission is to advance the interdisciplinary domain of heritage science by developing advanced methodologies for the non-invasive imaging, characterization, and digital analysis of cultural and natural heritage.

## 🌟 Our Focus Areas

We combine STEM with the humanities to enhance the understanding, care, and sustainable use of cultural heritage. Our research and engineering efforts focus heavily on:
* **Advanced Multimodal Imaging:** Utilizing micro-CT, photogrammetry, computational photography, and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to digitize and analyze objects in unparalleled fidelity.
* **Materials Characterization:** Deploying precise analytical tools to understand the physical, chemical, and structural properties of delicate heritage materials.
* **Large-Scale Data Processing:** Building cyberinfrastructure and methodologies for capturing, structuring, processing, and mining massive volumetric and imaging datasets (e.g., terabyte-sized CT volumes).

## 🔬 The EduceLab Infrastructure

Our unique ecosystem of non-destructive instrumentation comprises four operational clusters designed to address the challenging variability of heritage science contexts:
* 🧪 **BENCH:** Gold-standard, high-capacity laboratory equipment in a fixed, controlled environment for precise measurement and materials characterization, including tools like SEMs.
* 🚙 **MOBILE:** Mobile equipment that can be deployed in-situ for collections, sites, and landscapes that cannot travel.
* 🛠️ **FLEX:** A protean, configurable prototype environment for envisioning, building, and testing custom instrument configurations (e.g., specialized optical rigs and camera arrays).
* 💻 **CYBER:** The cyberinfrastructure powering efficient data flow—from acquisition to structured analysis—supporting high-performance computing, data science, and artificial intelligence.

## 💻 Open Source & Software

We are committed to open science and building accessible, high-performance tools for the broader heritage science community. Our repositories largely focus on:

* **High-Performance Rendering:** Developing real-time volume rendering solutions (leveraging formats like Zarr) for interacting with massive, complex heritage datasets.
* **Imaging & Capture Utilities:** Creating accessible applications and scripts for automating hardware, calculating optical system parameters, and managing DSLR camera arrays.
* **Volumetric Analysis Tools:** Open-source libraries and toolkits designed for the complex processing, segmentation, and mapping of 3D datasets.

## 🤝 Connect & Collaborate

Heritage science is inherently a convergence discipline. We rely on robust collaborations across computer science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and the humanities. 

* 🌐 **Website:** [educelab.engr.uky.edu](https://educelab.engr.uky.edu/)
* 🐙 **GitHub:** [@educelab](https://github.com/educelab)
* 📍 **Location:** University of Kentucky | Lexington, KY

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*EduceLab is supported by a National Science Foundation Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure Project (Award Number 2131940).*