David Juanes

His career in the area of research in cultural heritage conservation began in 1998 at the University of Valencia, where he participated in the development of portable X-ray fluorescence equipment for the non-invasive in situ analysis of works of art.

From 2003 to 2007 he joined the Spanish Historical Heritage Institute as a freelancer, where he was trained in the different techniques and methodologies for the study and diagnosis of the state of conservation of works of art, and collaborated in the setting up of a methodology for the analysis of historical-artistic heritage objects that optimizes the use of techniques with and without sampling. In 2007 he joined the Valencian Institute of Conservation, Restoration and Research, where he currently provides technical and scientific support to the various conservation and restoration departments.He has participated in R+D projects related to the conservation and restoration of historical heritage. He is the author of scientific publications focused on technologies applied to the study and conservation of historical heritage mainly through the use of non-invasive techniques.

Nowadays, he is working on the application of 3D technologies in conservation and restoration of cultural heritage, Recent examples of this linework are the study of the Façade of the Apostles in Morella, the application of computed tomography for studying wooden sculpture and GIS technology as tool for managing scientific results and conservation processes in work of art.

Marina Paolanti

Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a system to perform functions that are generally associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning and learning. AI has a long tradition in addressing challenging problems in different domains, e.g., medicine, retail and Cultural Heritage. However, AI now provides more powerful and groundbreaking capabilities for research and development. Recently, Deep Learning and Deep Neural Networks are disrupting traditional AI technologies and bring new requirements and usage models to current systems and applications. These have proved incredibly successful at correctly classifying all kinds of input, including images, speech and data on consumer preferences. There are plenty of use cases for scenarios where technology can now outperform humans and booming investment in this area is testment to that. But here’s the question: Is replicating human intelligence the most impactful application, and therefore the key goal, of intelligence technology?

Marina Paolanti is a post-doc research fellow and contract professor at the Department of Information Engineering (DII) of Università Politecnica delle Marche. In December 2012, she received the M.Sc. degree in Electronic Engineering at Università Politecnica delle Marche. In March 2018, she obtained the European PhD in Information Engineering from Università Politecnica delle Marche with a thesis entitled "Pattern Recognition for Challenging Computer Vision Applications" (Advisor Prof. Primo Zingaretti, Co-Advisor Prof. Emanuele Frontoni). Her research focuses on Deep Learning, Machine Learning, image processing, and Computer Vision. During her PhD, she has worked at GfK Verein (Nuremberg, Germany) for Visual and Textual sentiment analysis of brand related social media pictures using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. She is a member of IEEE, CVPL and AI*IA.

Matthew Vincent

Rekrei is a cloudsourcing platform for the preservation of the memory of lost cultural heritage. The project was founded in 2015 by Matthew Vincent and Chance Coughenour in response to the destruction of the Mosul Cultural Museum by Daesh (the so called 'Islamic State'). In the face this destruction, crowdsourced photogrammetry provided a path forward to preservation in the wake of the senseless destruction. Yet, what is this preservation? The results of this sort of crowdsourced photogrammetry can never promise geometric accuracy, nor can it provide the ability to replace what has been lost. Afterall, the photogrammetry can't tell us anything about materials, or anything below the surface, and the list could quickly grow when we think about the shortcomings of crowdsourced photogrammetry.

Yet, perhaps the role it can play is far more vital than we can imagine. The role of cultural heritage in the stability of a community is underplayed and often forgotten. In this keynote presentation, Matthew will share his story of travelling to Mosul in 2019 for the first public gathering since the occupation of the city by Daesh, and the first event in the museum for well over a decade. The experience allowed me to witness firsthand the impact tha culture can have in inspiring a community towards an optimistic future.

Rekrei can challenge us to look at cultural heritage projects outside of the scope of research alone and thing about the broader impact of heritage in the community context. How can our heritage benefit the community at large? How can we offer hope and resiliency through the past?