Our Mission
Our team of engineers and scientists believe in the power of mass-deployed ocean sensor networks to unlock breakthrough insights in climate and weather research, industry operations, and marine domain awareness. At Oshen, we seek to develop small, rugged robots that can be manufactured at a low cost and deployed in constellations across the oceans.
Founders
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.
Present day: Anahita currently oversees Oshen's strategic development and hardware design, applying her specialised knowledge to advance autonomous marine sensing technologies.
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 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.
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.
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 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
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.
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 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. Currently, we’re shifting from multi-week offshore missions with a small number of early customers to multi-month ocean missions with 5-strong constellations. 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
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First C-Star built and tested in conditions up to Beaufort force six.
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Oshen awarded funding from the European Space Agency.
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Begin DEFRA funded project assessing using C-Stars for biodiversity monitoring.
2023
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C-Stars are reliably completing 24hr fully autonomous unsupervised missions at sea, fitted with Met-Ocean and Passive Acoustic Monitoring sensors.
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The Guardian, BBC news and The Times feature exclusive interviews about Oshen.
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C-Stars are used for a successful passive acoustic data collection exercise in Cardigan Bay.
2024
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C-Star leased under the Synchro program by MBARI, deployed on four missions in Monterey Bay (USA).
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Batch manufacture run expands the fleet to nine C-Stars
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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
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Oshen participates in the Gulf Blue Navigator program, sending a small constellation of C-Stars for missions on the USA Gulf Coast.
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Oshen are funded by the Advanced Research + Inventions Agency (ARIA) to undertake an ambitious project to design & deploy a large scale constellation in the North Atlantic to predict climate tipping points.
Proven partnerships
We're proud to have worked with a wide range of organisations, spanning research, industry and government.
