Etosha Cave

Cave grew up in Houston, Texas, where she became interested in recycling oil and gas. During high school she joined the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).^[1] She studied at Olin College, and was in the first graduating year in 2006.^[2][3] She held a NSBE Scholarship. After graduating, she worked at the McMurdo Station, where she serviced HVAC systems and tested open path laser diode spectrometer for future NASA Rover Mission.^[4] Eventually Cave returned to her studies, and started a doctoral program at Stanford University working under the supervision of Thomas F. Jaramillo.^[5] During her PhD she worked on electrochemical approaches that could be used to convert carbon dioxide and water into useful plastics and household cleaners.^[6] She built a gas analysis system that could determine the composition of electrochemical reactions in realtime and earned her PhD in 2015.

While at Stanford University, Cave co-founded Twelve, a startup that uses metal catalysts to recycle carbon dioxide.^[7][8][9] At first, Twelve struggled to raise money from the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.^[10] Today Twelve is based at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has secured several academic partnerships including funding from the National Science Foundation and I-Corps program.^[10][11]

Cave ultimately hopes that they will be able to make diesel fuel from recycled carbon dioxide and water.^[12][1][13] Cave discussed the idea at TEDx Stanford, where she explained the recycled carbon dioxide could reduce our carbon footprint as well as supporting future space travel.^[14] Twelve was awarded the Forbes magazine Change the World Award and was selected for the Advanced Manufacturing Office Cyclotron Road program in 2016.^[15][16][17] She was a finalist for the Carbon Xprize in 2018.^[18]

Her awards and honours include;

• 2016 Echoing Green Fellow^[19]
• 2017 7x7's Hot 20 Perennial Bay Area Innovators^[11]
• 2017 Smithsonian Institution Innovators to Watch^[20]
• 2018 Grist Top 508^[21]
• 2018 Vanity Fair 26 Women of Color Diversifying Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, Media, and Beyond^[22][23]

She has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival and been part of Science Foo Camp.^[24] She is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.^[25] Cave is a member of the advisory board of the Berkeley Startup Cluster.^[26]