The Birthplace of our Collaborations

The Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture, and Archaeology, also known as CISA3 (but with an Italian ‘ch’ at its start- so ‘che-sA’ vs. ‘cee-sA’), was founded as an interdisciplinary research venture between art historians, archaeologists, and computer scientists and engineers, with the goal of developing technology for historical surveying and conservation monitoring, a concept dubbed ‘cultural heritage diagnostics’ by its founding Director, the fabulous Maurizio Seracini.

Housed at the University of San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute- a branch of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2)- CISA3 set out to develop techy solutions to analyzing the past. With projects sponsored by some amazing private donors, the National Geographic Society, the Explorer’s Club, and with especial reference to the National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (the NSF-IGERT)– CISA3 worked on projects around the world, including the Quests for the supposed King Solomon’s Mines in southern Jordan (under Professor Thomas E. Levy), the hunt for Ghengis Khan’s Tomb in Mongolia (under Professor Albert Lin) and the Search for the Lost Da Vinci in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio (under Director Maurizio Seracini).