MN Futures Research Grant Award Recipients 2011-2013
Lucy Fortson, Physics and Astronomy
Title: The Data Deluge: Applying Data Processing Techniques Derived from Astrophysics Citizen
Science Projects to Research Problems in Egyptian Papyrology
Abstract: Researchers in fields as diverse as astrophysics and papyrology face a common problem: as
the size of digital datasets increases dramatically, new strategies in computational thinking are needed
to transform data into knowledge. One approach successfully applied by the Citizen Science Alliance in
astrophysics is to harness the visual processing capabilities of hundreds of thousands of human
volunteers to make observations on data sets of complex objects presented to the public through online
interfaces. The data provided by the volunteers are then processed by computational algorithms for
further analysis and knowledge discovery.
We propose to apply this process to make a quantum leap in the scholarly output associated with the
world’s largest collection of papyri from Greco--‐Roman Egypt – the Oxyrhynchus collection of over
500,000 fragments dating from 150 BCE. In two years, when our project is completed, we will have
processed over 50,000 fragments of papyri that have never before been analyzed. By applying data
mining algorithms common in astrophysics to this deluge of papyri data, we will double the number of
papyrus fragments that have been examined from the Oxyrhynchus collection thus far. A junior scholar
in papyrology hired through the Minnesota Futures Grant will play a pivotal role in managing the citizen
science project, interpreting the ensuing data and contributing to the graduate education and
departmental activities of the Classical and Near Eastern Studies department. An education research
component will investigate the impact of the project on the citizen scientists’ engagement in the process
of research.