About Atargis

Established in 2010 by a group of U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) researchers, Atargis Energy has dedicated the last decade to innovating ocean wave energy through a lift-based, real-time controlled device, distinguishing it from the buoyancy and drag-based alternatives currently in development by our competitors.

Get acquainted with the executive, development, and advisory teams committed to introducing the CycWEC's grid-scale, baseload electricity to the market, projected to achieve a competitive Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE) of $0.06/kWh.

Company Vision

With the CycWEC, Atargis hopes to empower a more sustainable future by providing baseload renewable electricity generation to communities all over the globe. We believe that ocean wave energy will accelerate and enable the transition to green electricity production worldwide.

Atargis Leadership

Dr. Stefan Siegel

Chief Technical Officer (CTO)
Stefan co-founded Atargis in 2010 and is the inventor of the CycWEC technology. He has served as CTO and President of Atargis since Atargis was founded from his team’s prior USAFA research. He holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Arizona, having specialized in experimental fluid dynamics.

Michael Egan
Hydrofoil Lift

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Michael has decades of C-level leadership experience across industries that include upstream and downstream oil and gas, chemicals, utilities, and power generation (nuclear and now wave energy). He has been chairman of the Atargis board since April of 2022 and transitioned to the role of CEO in December of 2023.

Bill Hartman

Board Member
Bill has over two decades of experience as CEO of a series of MedTech and defense technology startup companies, enjoying several successful exits and more than one successful turnaround. Bill joined Atargis as its CEO in August of 2020 and transitioned to role of board member in December 2023.

Atargis Development Team

Dr. Casey Fagley

Senior Controls Engineer:
Dr. Fagley, an aeronautical research engineer at the US Air Force Academy, served as the senior controls engineer at Atargis from 2011-2013, focusing on the development, design, and testing of the 1:10 CycWEC model. He later returned to Atargis part-time from 2019-2021 to develop the control scheme for the upcoming 1:15 scale tank testing campaign.

Dr. Kedar Chitale
Hydrofoil Lift

Senior CFD Engineer:
Dr. Chitale has over 12 years of experience developing and applying computational methods to solve challenging physical problems. He began working at Atargis in February of 2020 and worked on advancing the Atargis simulation codes and programming embedded hardware for data acquisition until October of 2021.

Dr. Ali Mohtat

Senior Ocean Engineer
Specializing in wave tank testing during his Ph.D. and postdoctoral work at Oregon State University, Dr. Mohtat joined Atargis in February 2020 after completing his postdoctoral work. At Atargis he developed a testing plan, negotiated contracts, and conducted structural and buoyancy analyses for the 1:15 scale CycWEC tank testing until January of 2022.

Former Senior Advisory Team

Former Senior Advisory Team Members:

Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, USN (Ret.):
Member of the board of directors at EPRI, Center for Climate and Security Advisory Board, and IMCCS

Dr. Jeff Roberts:
Former Director of Advanced Energy Technologies at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, board member at the Center for Sustainable Energy

Dr. Bob Breidenthal:
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Adjunct Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington

Rob Oglesby:
Former Executive Director of the California Energy Commission

Atargis Development Timeline

How it Started

2010: Atargis was founded
2012: Wave tank testing at Texas A&M supported by NSF funding
2013-2019: Numerical validation, simulation and control algorithm development [Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4]

Where We Are Now
Hydrofoil Lift

2019-2023: Department of Energy funded design and simulation work for 1:15 scale CycWEC tank tests
2024-2025: 1:15 scale CyCWEC tank testing campaign [TRL 6]

Where We Are Headed

2025-2027: Open Ocean testing and certification of a 1.25MW CycWEC, immediate commercial viability in micro-grid applications [TRL 9]
2027 onward: Testing, certification, and deployment of 2.5MW wave energy converters in wave farm configurations.