Pell received his Bachelor of Science degree in symbolic systems from Stanford University in 1989, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar.
[2][3] Pell's research is focused on basic problems in the study of intelligence, computer game playing, machine learning, natural language processing, autonomous robotics, and web search.
Barney Pell has published over 30 technical papers on topics related to information retrieval, knowledge management, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and scheduling systems.
[6] Barney Pell was the Technical Area Manager of the Collaborative and Assistant Systems area within the Computational Sciences Division (now the Intelligent Systems Division) at NASA Ames Research Center, where he oversaw a staff of 80 scientists working on information retrieval, search, knowledge management, machine learning, semantic technology, human centered systems, collaboration technology, adaptive user interfaces, human robot interaction, and other areas of artificial intelligence.
He was the founder and CEO of Powerset, a San Francisco startup company that built a search engine based on natural language processing technology originally developed at XEROX PARC.
[12] Pell was also co-founder and chairman of LocoMobi, Inc., a U.S. company developing mobile, software and hardware technology solutions for the parking industry.
"[20] Pell believes that with advancements in space exploration technology the moon will soon be a commercially viable resource for material such as platinum and water.