News from Illinois Wesleyan

April 15, 2002
Contact: Sherry Wallace, 309/556-3181

Charles A. Pell to Keynote Illinois Wesleyan’s
13th Annual John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Just as the famous Siberian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), became known for his organization of chemical elements, artist-biologist Charles Pell, is making a name for himself for his arrangement of living and extinct things that swim and fly into groups.

Pell, also interested in boomerangs, has had a lifelong interest in art images and powered sculptures of microorganisms, swimming and flying fauna (extinct and extant) and locomotor machinery. He will deliver the keynote address, "A Periodic Table of Things That Swim and Fly," at Illinois Wesleyan’s 13th Annual John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Pell will speak on Saturday, April 20 at 11 a.m. in the Anderson Auditorium (C101) of the Center for Natural Science (CNS), 201 E. Beecher St., Bloomington.

The conference, which is sponsored by IWU’s Provost’s Office and the IWU Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, is scheduled for Friday, April 19 as well.

The conference, which is named for explorer-geologist John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran and a founder of the National geographic Society, who joined IWU’s faculty in 1865, will showcase approximately 66 students and their individual research projects in such diverse fields as physics, psychology, economics, history, international studies and music.

Pell, a research associate in biology at Duke University, also is Vice President of Science and Technology at Nekton Research LLC in Durham, North Carolina. He is co-principal investigator on the biomimetic 3D modeling of oscillatory propulsive structures. The Miniature (Please see reverse side) Underwater Vehicle (MAUV) effort is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This effort is aimed at producing swarms of mass-produced MAUV’s for environmental monitoring, mapping and ocean search missions. The MicroHunters are programmable, fly search patterns and home in on signal sources using environmental cues.

Pell’s other biologically inspired projects include the Nektor flexible maneuvering thruster and PilotFish, unmanned agile-underwater vehicle efforts, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, plus educational toys like the TwiddleFish.

Pell has served as art director of the Duke Bio-Design biomechanics modeling facility and as research coordinator for Dinamation in Los Angeles, which built full-sized robotic dinosaurs for the Smithsonian, the British Museum and others.

In 1987, Pell received a master of fine arts degree in sculpture from the University of Notre Dame and studied at Ecole de la Rue, in Paris, France in 1985. He received a bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture in 1984 from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich., and studied at the Center for Creative Studies, College of Art & Design in Detroit, Mich., from 1977-1979.

Pell has received many awards and contracts and has published numerous scientific and technical publications. He has been interviewed on ABC National News, National Geographic TV, TechTV News, Scientific American Frontiers, Technology Review, Scientic American, Wired, Exploratorium, Discover magazines, and many more. He also is the holder of four patents.