Speaker Series: Dan Widmaier, PhD, CEO and Co-founder, Bolt Threads

From Lab to Runway - Bolt Threads’ Journey in Biomaterials

In 2009, Dan Widmaier was a fifth-year synthetic biology graduate student at UCSF. He was fascinated by spiders and their silk, and created a company with government grants, starting operations out of just a single bench in an incubator space. Now as the CEO of Bolt Threads, a pioneering biomaterials company that has raised over $200MM, he leads a 100+ person team that is producing artificial spider silk, mycileum leather and other sustainable materials for major partners in the apparel industry. Hear Dan’s story of growing the company he started in his UCSF lab into a global innovation materials platform.