Dr. Tyler MacCready

Tyler is Founder and President of Ocean Lab, a Swarm Engineering firm in Southern California developing water drones for distributed applications. This business emerged naturally out of his long history at AeroVironment, Inc., a company founded by his father, Paul MacCready.

In the 80’s Tyler worked in the shop at AeroVironment on a variety of innovative vehicles including the human-powered Gossamer Condor aircraft, the Solar Challenger airplane, the SunRaycer solar car, and the QN flying pterodactyl replica.

Following a ten-year hiatus to study geology, Tyler returned to AeroVironment to work on a number of ocean-based initiatives including wave and current power conversion devices, submerged solar power, and aquatic vehicles. At Ocean Lab he continues this legacy, applying AeroVironment’s high-efficiency and innovative design philosophy to fleets of autonomous aquatic vehicles.

Education:

PhD, Geology and Geophysics, 1998, Monash University, Australia.
MSc, Geology, 1993, University of Wyoming.
BA, Philosophy, 1984, Yale University.

Links:

• Ocean Lab, LLC
• AeroVironment, Inc.
• Scientific American Frontiers [season 11, episode 9]
• Gossamer Condor
• Solar Challenger
• SunRaycer
• QN
• Wave power
• Current power