Huai-Pu Chen is a professional celestial navigator whose fieldwork spans over 720 days at sea and more than 20,000 kilometers sailed across the world’s oceans.
To confront an era of uncertainty, we must braid Western science with Indigenous wisdom to chart a new course for humanity.
Huai-Pu Chen is a Royal Yachting Association (RYA) Yachtmaster, inventor, scientist, and educator devoted to articulating a universal navigation architecture for the next generation of ocean explorers.
He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.
Anchored in Western scientific celestial navigation, he is among the youngest in Asia to receive the prestigious RYA Yachtmaster qualification. He has been involved in major expeditions, including sailing the 77-foot vessel Vinson of Antarctica from the Falkland Islands to Cape Town—over 8,000 kilometres across the Southern Ocean’s Furious Fifties and Roaring Forties—without GPS, relying solely on celestial navigation.
Expanding beyond Western methodologies, he undertakes an expedition with Indigenous Polynesian and Micronesian navigators, practicing traditional wayfinding across the Pacific Ocean without modern electronic devices. This work represents a core element of his mission: to unify navigation knowledge across scientific exploration and Indigenous wisdom.
He has served as a delegate at the 2022 Our Ocean Conference in Palau and the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in France.
His contributions have been showcased by TEDx Talks, Science News, and NASA—and even among the stars, with the asteroid 15554 ChenHuaipu, named in his honour by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.
Affiliations & Qualifications
Huai-Pu Chen has delivered more than 70 educational speeches worldwide, including TEDx talks and addresses at the United Nations Ocean Conference.
