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Our 
Mission

Our mission is to build a persistent sensing layer for the world’s oceans.

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Oshen develops autonomous systems that can be deployed at scale to continuously monitor the ocean surface and near-surface environment.

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We believe that mass-deployed, navigable ocean sensors are essential to understanding climate dynamics, protecting critical infrastructure, and operating safely at sea.

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Founders

Anahita

Anahita Laverack

CEO

Background: Holding a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College London, Anahita completed her Master's in the design and navigation of transatlantic autonomous micro-vessels. Prior to co-founding Oshen, she worked as a robotics engineer at start-up KinKeepers. 

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Present day: Anahita currently oversees Oshen's strategic development and hardware design, applying her specialised knowledge to advance autonomous marine sensing technologies.

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Fun fact: A keen sailor, Anahita maintains that an underlying motivation for providing ocean data for better forecasts was born in 2020, after having to double-handed sail continuously for 3 days to try outrun a poorly forecast storm. 

Ciaran

Ciaran Dowds

CTO

​Background: Ciaran holds an MEng (Hons) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Imperial College London, where he earned a place on the Dean's List for his academic achievements. Before Oshen, Ciaran developed an app used by NHS speech therapists for children, and workedat DSTL.

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Present day: As CTO and co-founder, Ciaran leads on further improvements across all areas of Oshen's R&D, as well as developing the main autonomous control system for the platforms. 

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Fun fact: After recovering an Oshen platform from the Irish Sea, despite being a recent convert to sailing, Ciaran solo sailed the 25ft sailboat through a force 5 back to their home port.

Advisors

Brett
Brett Phaneuf

Brett is the founder and chief executive of Submergence Group  (USA) / MSubs (UK), specialising in robust, manned and unmanned ocean-going systems. A serial entrepreneur, Brett recently lead the development of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship - a 50ft AI powered vessel that crossed the Atlantic in June 2022.

Wayne Pavalko
Wayne Pavalko 

Founder WRG, Inventor of the MakerBuoy. Driven by a fascination with the Internet of Things applied to the ocean, Wayne pioneered the MakerBuoy - an open source, low cost drifter. From Atlantic crossings to tracking ocean plastic, Wayne’s creations have survived the harshest of ocean environments, often for 600+ days.

David
Dr Peter Smout

An Associate Fellow at Rolls Royce, Peter has over 30 years experience in technical engineering challenges, and has contributed to several patents ranging from composite fan blades to a novel method of operating a heat exchanger assembly for a gas turbine engine.

Arthur
Arthur Richier

Head of Partnerships, strategy and sustainability at Vortexa, a leading energy and shipping AI analytics scale-up, and has featured in Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, The Moscow Times and The Houston Chronicle. His specialist interest in machine learning extends to start-up funding across logistics and insurance.

Timeline

We’re a company with an ambitious mission to deploy a large-scale constellation of robots across our oceans. However, we don't want to over-hype our capabilities, or overstate where we're at. The ocean's next sensing layer requires 1000+ C-Stars to make the biggest impact possible. Individual C-Stars have completed 4+ month msisions, collected data in hurricanes, but constellations are in the 10s, not hundreds. Below, we’ve shared a little about our journey so far, and what you can expect from us in the future.

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  • Founders begin work designing small wind-powered ocean robots, inspired by the Microtransat challenge. 

2021

2022

  • First C-Star built and tested in conditions up to Beaufort force six.

  • Oshen awarded funding from the European Space Agency.

  • Begin DEFRA funded project assessing using C-Stars for biodiversity monitoring.

2023

  • C-Stars are reliably completing 24hr fully autonomous unsupervised missions at sea, fitted with Met-Ocean and Passive Acoustic Monitoring sensors. 

  • The Guardian, BBC news and The Times feature exclusive features on Oshen.

  • C-Stars are used for a successful passive acoustic data collection exercise in Cardigan Bay.

2024

  • C-Star leased under the Synchro program by MBARI, deployed on four missions in Monterey Bay (USA).

  • Batch manufacture run expands the fleet to nine C-Stars

  • A C-Star operates in a winter storm with 9m high waves, reliably transmitting weather data throughout.

  • Oshen provides the storm data to The Met Office for research & development. 

2025

  • Oshen are awarded a £2m project funded by the Advanced Research + Inventions Agency (ARIA) to design & deploy a 50-strong C-Star constellation in the North Atlantic to predict climate tipping points.​

  • Oshen C-Stars become the world's first surface robots to collect data in a category 5 hurricane while completing a project with 8 C-Stars for NOAA.

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