Our
Mission
At Oshen, we seek to develop small, rugged robots that can be manufactured at a low cost and deployed in constellations across the oceans.
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.
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.
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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 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.
Proven partnerships
We're proud to have worked with a wide range of organisations, spanning research, industry and government.
