Rachel Slaybaugh
Investor at DCVC
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Board Member, People and Culture Committee Chair
2024 - Current
Board Observer
2022 - 2024
Fervo Energy develops clean energy technology to generate carbon-free energy from geothermal systems.
Raised $531,000,000.00 from DCVC, Capricorn Investment Group and Congruent Ventures.
Board Member
2023
Fourth Power is an energy storage startup that uses thermal batteries.
Raised $19,000,000.00 from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, DCVC and Black Venture Capital Consortium.
Partner
2023
Principal
2022 - 2023
I focus on climate tech at DCVC where DCVC backs entrepreneurs solving trillion-dollar global problems to multiply the benefits of capitalism for everyone while reducing its costs. We are a Deep Tech venture fund with over $2 billion under management.
DCVC backs entrepreneurs using deep tech to solve problems and multiply the benefits of capitalism for everyone while reducing its cost.
Independent Board Member
2022
Radiant develops portable nuclear microreactors as clean energy alternatives.
Raised $153,819,987.00 from Union Square Ventures, Washington Harbour Partners, Chevron Technology Ventures, Also Capital, McKinley Capital Management, DCVC, Felicis, Andreessen Horowitz, Boost VC and Decisive Point.
Board Observer
2022
Brimstone is a hardware cleantech startup that aims to reduce CO2 emissions through innovative technologies.
Raised $244,000,000.00 from US Department of Energy.
Board Member
2020
Founding Board Chair through 01/2023; Board Member 01/2023 through 12/2025 https://www.goodenergycollective.org/
Board Observer
2022 - 2024
Petra is a Robotics company that focuses solely on underground utilities.
Raised $33,000,000.00 from Big Sky Partners and Tekfen Ventures.
Committee Member, Study on Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the US
2020 - 2022
Division Director
2021 - 2021
• Source and select ∼10 hard tech innovators per year for a 2-year fellowship program to turn their technology concept into a product with a positive societal impact (∼$6M/year) • Fellows embed at LBNL where we support their technical development and collaborations • Responsible for outcomes, safety, and reporting to Department of Energy and LBNL leadership • Coordinate closely with Activate.org leadership in co-running the program
Berkeley Lab is a national laboratory that creates advanced new tools for scientific discovery.
Associate Professor
2014 - 2021
• Frequent invited speaker on innovation in the nuclear energy sector at clean tech, academic, government, NGO, and international fora • Founded the Nuclear Innovation Bootcamp, which brings diverse students from around the world to learn skills essential to innovation in nuclear energy • Developing numerical methods for neutral particle transport with an emphasis on supercomputing and advanced architectures; applications in reactor design, shielding, and nonproliferation • Also mentored PhDs in optimization, thermal fluids, and cryptography and anomaly detection • Published 25 journal articles, 44 refereed conference proceedings, 3 technical reports, 2 book chapters, 5 open source pieces of software, and 2 policy pieces (http://rachelslaybaugh.github.io/CV/rns_publications.pdf) • Graduated 9 PhD and 4 MS students; research adviser for 1 assistant project scientist, 1 postdoctoral scholar, 1 visiting scholar, and 15 undergraduate students • Won >$2.5M as principal investigator (PI) and >$26M as co-PI for numerical methods research • Created and support a course in which Berkeley students do hands on science experiments at under-served elementary schools in Oakland