An accomplished artist, researcher and commercial diver, Dr. Sarah Jane Pell consults, produces and performs underwater media and designs interdisciplinary sci-art laboratories as new forms of live art and civilian space analogues. She founded the Aquabatics Research Team, Australia 2002 to explore the creative potentials combining performing arts, human movement, and underwater diving and habitat technologies. Her first expositions were installed at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997 & 1998. She has since shown in over 50 exhibition/performance and festival programs. She received a PhD Visual Arts from Edith Cowan University, and the award of Best PhD abstract Art & Science (English Language) 2007 from Leonardo LABS, MIT US. She is the first “artist” alumni of the International Space University and Singularity University at NASA Ames. Her first Space Art payload was launched on-board SPRITE-SAT Payload H-IIA JAXA Japanese Space Agency (GOSAT) 2009. Her DVD ‘walking with water’ was released by Contemporary Arts Media CAM, UK/AU 2007. She is an ADAS commercial diver with over 1500 hrs in-water time logged and official Artist-Aquanaut of the Atlantica Undersea Habitat Expeditions. She is TED Fellow and Freedman Foundation Travelling Art Scholar. She is currently Co-Chair of the European Space Agency Topical Team Art & Science (ETTAS), Committee Member for AS-017 Australian Standards (Occupational Diving) and an RMIT Visiting Research Fellow at the Exertion Games Lab designing new interactive performance technologies for Underwater Play.
