The Script Encoding Initiative (SEI) is a project in the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics, devoted to the preparation of formal proposals for the encoding of scripts and script elements not yet currently supported in Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646), the universal character encoding standard.
SEI was officially established in April 2002. Although SEI works closely with members of the Unicode Consortium, with the Unicode Technical Committee, and with WG2, SEI and Unicode
are separate organizations. The Unicode Consortium is directed
at formalization and promotion of the international computing standard, and SEI work is geared toward preparation of formal proposals for review by UTC and ISO/IEC 10646, in accordance with the formal encoding process.
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in modern software products and standards. Membership in the Unicode Consortium is open to organizations and individuals anywhere in the world who support the Unicode Standard and wish to assist in its extension and implementation. The consortium is supported financially solely through membership dues.
For additional information on Unicode, future encoding plans, and scripts not yet supported, please visit the Unicode website.
Deborah Anderson is a Researcher in Linguistics at UC Berkeley, is the UC Berkeley representative to the Unicode Technical Committee and the liaison representative for UC Berkeley to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 on Coded Character sets.
Rick McGowan is a Unicode Technical Vice President. Formerly a software engineer with AT&T, NeXT, and Apple, he has been active in the Unicode Technical Committee since 1990.
Gabrielle Vail is a Research Associate at SEI. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from Tulane University and is a Research Collaborator at the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the archaeology and epigraphy of prehispanic Maya cultures, as documented in hieroglyphic sources such as the Maya codices (see her website at hieroglyphicresearch.org).
Isabelle Zaugg is a Research Associate at SEI. She earned her PhD in Communication from American University and is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University's Data Science Institute. Her research focus is language justice in the digital sphere, with a particular focus on languages written in the Ethiopic script. She has researched the relationship between Unicode and script communities, and has written and presented on the important role of grassroots intermediaries such as SEI, that bridge user communities and Internet governance institutions.
Anshuman Pandey is a Research Associate of SEI. He completed Ph.D in History at the University of Michigan and since 2005 has been developing Unicode standards for scripts of south, south-east, and central Asia Details of his work are available here.
Richard Cook is Vice-President of Research and Development of Wenlin Institute. He is also a member of the Unicode editorial committee, active in Unicode, ISO/IEC 10646, and the IRG since 1998. Richard provides technical support and input on East Asian script proposals.
Michael Everson is a long-time Unicode script proposal author, as well as a typesetter and font designer. Information on his work is found on his website evertype.com.
Jan Kučera is a Research Associate of SEI. He completed Ph.D in Human-Computer Interaction at the Newcastle University and joined Unicode in 2014. He is also member of ISO/JTC 1/SC 2 and ISO/TC 46 committees. Jan provides input on South Asian script proposals.
Anushah Hossain is a Research Associate at SEI. She is a historian of technology, whose dissertation work focused on the Unicode Standard and its treatment of Indic scripts. She completed her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab.
Lara Lin Mcconnaughey, Iman Hani Alzaghari, Joyce Choi, Shirin Moti, Elizabeth Martyn, and Akshayraj Aitha, all undergraduates of UC Berkeley assisted on web-related work for the project in spring and summer of 2016.
Sandeep Subramanian is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Sandeep submitted information to Wikipedia and ScriptSource on scripts encoded through the SEI project. He also did script research and web-related tasks in 2015.
Karen Stollznow holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics. Karen did research on scripts for SEI from 2005 until 2012.
Rade Matic is a graphic designer and teacher at University of Applied Science, Faculty of Design, Darmstadt, Germany. He supports the SEI since 2015.