Athena’s leadership team is dedicated to building trusted partnerships and delivering innovative, cost-effective, and reliable solutions.
Dan McCaugherty | President & CEO
Dan McCaugherty brings over 30 years experience in the research, development, and operation of complex critical systems for federal and commercial clients to include the DoD, NASA, DOE, DOT, DHS, and various commercial clients.
After graduating with a BS in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Mr. McCaugherty worked as a flight control engineer and technical manager on Space Shuttle flight and ground systems. He then served as a solution architect and manager for Independent Verification and Validation of critical systems while with Titan Corporation (through acquisition of AverStar and Intermetrics). In 2001 Mr. McCaugherty joined ProLogic, Inc. where as a Vice President, he initiated lines of business in the areas of military tactical communications, net-centric simulations, IT services, data analytics, and energy management.
In 2009, he founded Athena, steering the corporation to provide systems engineering for space systems, simulation and emulation based advanced test automation for embedded computing, development of cloud-based enterprise systems, and research and development of biometrics products and systems. Most recently he has strategically guided the company to develop AI-based solutions for biometric identity matching and leading the integration of national level automated biometric identification systems (ABIS) resulting in a three year CAGR of 45%.
Dan Nawrocki | Vice President & CTO
Dan Nawrocki has over 15 years experience as an innovator and system architect. Graduating with a BS in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from West Virginia University, Mr. Nawrocki developed novel spacecraft flight simulation simulators at ProLogic and designed and developed national-scale biometric systems at Northrop Grumman.
He joined Athena in 2010, where he has since led development of the Athena Themis™️ biometrics product and served as consultant to Northrop Grumman and Leidos for defense and homeland security biometrics systems. An AWS certified solutions architect developer, Mr. Nawrocki designed multiple cloud-native and cloudy-read systems and products for use by the federal government (DHS, Army, US Treasury). Mr. Nawrocki was also the principal innovator for the NASA GO-Sim project, which became a 2012 NASA Software of the Year finalist representing Goddard Space Flight Center.
Mr. Nawrocki was chosen to be Athena’s Vice President and CTO in 2014.