Washington and Lee University computer science major, Micah Tongen ’26, has published a cutting edge research article exploring how artificial intelligence can be used to search ancient Greek and Roman texts. His piece, titled “Semantic Search for Ancient Inscriptions,” appears in the Anthology of Computers and the Humanities.
Working with Professors Sara Sprenkle and Rebecca Benefiel, Tongen built a semantic search system that helps scholars find meaningful connections in Latin and Greek graffiti using AI to find similar themes, even when the words are different. The system turns epigraphs from the Ancient Graffiti Project into numbers that represent the meaning of the words. This helps researchers spot connections they might otherwise miss and could be useful in other fields that deal with large amounts of information.
A Johnson Scholar and CS Dept. teaching assistant, Tongen hopes to pursue a Ph.D. or research-focused career in information retrieval and human‑computer interaction.
Congratulations, Micah!