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 built the laser diode for future NASA missions. Eventually Cave returned to her studies, and started a doctoral program at Stanford University working under the supervision of Thomas F. Jaramillo.[4] During her PhD she worked on electrochemical approaches that could be used to convert carbon dioxide and water into useful plastics and household cleaners.[5] 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.[6][7][8] At first, Twelve struggled to raise money from the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.[9] 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.[9][10]

Cave ultimately hopes that they will be able to make diesel fuel from recycled carbon dioxide and water.[11][1][12] 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.[13] Twelve was awarded the Forbes magazine Change the World Award and was selected for the Advanced Manufacturing Office Cyclotron Road program in 2016.[14][15][16] She was a finalist for the Carbon Xprize in 2018.[17]