At US university, Greek minister meets “digital twin”, Spartan King Leonidas

Greece’s Minister of Culture and Sports Lina Mendoni was welcomed by University of Connecticut (UConn) representatives earlier this month during a visit focused on exploring collaboration prospects.

Officials, including the Greek ambassador to the United States Alexandra Papadopoulou, were given a tour at the UConn Tech Park’s Innovation Partnership Building (IPB) and presented with a rather original memorabilia: miniature busts of the Spartan king Leonidas made from a 3D printer.

“We invited them to IPB because we wanted them to see our Tech Park and basically how we’re connecting technology with culture and arts,” said Prof. Emmanouil Anagnostou, interim executive director of the UConn Tech Park.

“The main discussion was about how we can enhance the affiliated study abroad program where we’re sending American students from UConn to Greece, where they engage in Greek studies and also visit archaeological sites.”

One of the initiatives proposed by Prof Anagnostou referred to a partnership where the advanced technology deployed to produce the miniature “digital twins” of Leonidas could be used to offer new ways of presenting components of historic Greek artefacts.

The 3D print mini copies of the Spartan king were created in honour of the dignitaries’ visit, based on the digital representation of the historic bust of Leonidas.

A copy of the original sculpture displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Sparta, was digitised using a technique known as photogrammetry to produce the king’s “digital twin” at the UConn Tech Park.

The UConn site has a brief explanation of how the technique works.

“With photogrammetry, a large series of high-resolution photographs are taken, and then a coordinate measuring technique is used to extract three-dimensional information from the two-dimensional images to create a permanent and detailed digital representation of the object.”

While at Uconn, Dr Mendoni also visited the Fine Arts School theatre accompanied by its Managing Director Michelle Polgar and the university’s Center for Hellenic Studies “Paideia” where she was welcomed by its President Elias Tomazos.