A Team Of Penn State Abington Professors Are Among Group Awarded Art Project Grant

ABINGTON, PA — A multidisciplinary team of Penn State Abington professors were among a group who were recently awarded a federal grant that will go toward the development of standards and protocols for a new scanning platform designed to enhance public online art viewing experiences.

The national Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the $83,040 grant for a project titled "High-Resolution Optical Imaging Platform for Digitization of Paintings in Color and 3D," according to an announcement from Penn State Abington.

The grant was given to the team of professors from Penn State Abington, Penn State University Park (main campus) and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The new scanning platform the professionals will develop using the grant money will include creating a portable art-specific optical coherent tomography, or OCT, scanner as well as a user-friendly software tool to display and analyze digital information collected by the scanner, according to the Penn State Abington announcement.

The school says that the project will enlist a target audience of undergraduate students who will assess their viewing and learning experiences with 3D digital art created with the scanner.

The goal, the school says, is to increase public access to artwork by advancing OCT technology in art-related applications.

"This is a great infrastructure investment to ensure that museums and libraries have access to state-of-the-art optical technology to meet their mission in a digital age especially in a post-pandemic world where learning and working online will probably become even more relevant," Yi Yang, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Penn State Abington, said in a statement. "We are very excited about this project and the opportunities it can potentially create."

Yang stated that the dedicated system would fulfill a need for museums in the Abington region, since this area is home to many of the art institutions along the Northeast corridor.

Yang was joined as co-principal on the grant along with Heather McCune Bruhn, assistant teaching professor of art history at Penn State's main campus, and Xuan Liu, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Penn State Abington says that students Nicholas Gahman, Yihang Liu and Honglin Wu were hired during the fall semester with funds from the grant to work on the project.