Stealing the Spider’s Secrets

Tim McGee's Mission to Reinvent Fiber Manufacturing

Spider silk is stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar, and spun at room temperature from water-soluble proteins. And after decades of trying, we still can’t replicate what a spider does without thinking.

The problem isn’t producing proteins at scale, it’s how we turn those proteins into fibers. Spiders run silk solution through precisely tuned microfluidic channels where pH, shear forces, and flow rates change along the length, creating fibers by triggering molecular-scale assembly that we can observe but can’t yet reproduce.

“If you look at spider silk, it’s not just one thing that’s impressive,” Tim McGee explains. “It’s really strong, it’s really tough, you can spin it really fast—having multiple performance characteristics like that is rare in the material world. Our existing technology can’t do it. But spiders do it all the time.”

The gap between possibility and reality isn’t around spider silk, but the whole class of protein-based fibers. Tim, a fellow in Speculative Technologies’ Brains Research Accelerator and now leader of the Impossible Fibers Lab at the Astera Institute, is trying to close that gap. His hypothesis is that figuring out how to translate lessons from how biology manufactures fibers into industrial practice could unlock incredible materials for fabrics, robotics, and beyond.

Twenty Years Circling the Problem

Initially motivated to study biology by the incredible things nature can create, Tim spent two decades working to apply the lessons of biology to how we make things. In all of academic biology, design, and consulting he collided with the same structural gaps.

Working with apparel and packaging companies, he hoped to unlock new technologies where they would be immediately used in products. “The apparel companies I worked with were looking at ‘what’s the future of fibers?’—but they didn’t have any ability to impact what that future actually is. They take what manufacturers produce and do small tweaks around the edges. Fundamentally changing how we make fibers was not within their capability to fund or engage.”

Even emerging protein fiber startups weren’t incorporating scientific insights published fifteen years earlier. “The things we know about how spider silk is made, how mussel byssal threads are made—that knowledge isn’t going to be translated into technology unless somebody makes an explicit effort.”

That realization crystallized the problem. The science existed but the institutions didn’t exist with the resources and incentives to operationalize it. Where do you get funding for work that’s too applied for academic grants and too blue-sky for venture capital? “I was looking for specifically how to get funding for this kind of work,” Tim recalls. “And that’s when Speculative Technologies popped into my Twitter feed.”

Finding Brains

Tim saw that Speculative Technologies was looking for ambitious ideas in materials and manufacturing so he reached out. “I said, listen—we know how nature makes fibers. It’s different from how we make fibers. I think there’s something really interesting here.” One thing led to another and Tim joined the Brains Research Accelerator.

The program delivered two things he couldn’t get elsewhere. First, a forcing function for clarity: “Brains enables you to clarify an idea to the appropriate level where you can have better conversations with others. Until you can share it concretely enough, you’re just on your own with an idea.”

Second—and Tim emphasizes this—psychological legitimacy. “You get support, encouragement, cheerleaders who are genuinely excited about you changing the world. A lot of times when you start, it’s just an idea and you’re by yourself trying to figure things out. Brains gives you agency. It gives you the ability to think that this is possible, and to realize that these things can happen.”

From Presentation to Lab

At the end of the Brains program, fellows present their ideas to an audience of connectors and decision makers. For Tim, that presentation catalyzed everything that followed.

“That led to making connections with folks in the audience. They suggested I should be talking to other companies and groups doing related work.” Conversations multiplied. One thread led to a DARPA “fast grants” style competition and a contract for Tim and his team to do a short, focused investigation into training AI models on fiber formation.

“That was a great start—it let us continue the momentum from the initial presentation, build on the work, and keep the interest moving in the community.” The DARPA project wasn’t just funding; it was credibility and trajectory maintenance while Tim developed the longer-term vision.

From there, he applied to the Astera Institute’s residency program. The fit was natural: Astera provides infrastructure for exactly this kind of translational research. Tim earned a spot in the residency and with it, the resources to build an actual lab.

“It gives us a physical place where we can work on this fiber formation technology. Now we have a platform for further growth.”

The Impossible Fibers Lab Today

The lab is in Emeryville, California where Tim leads a four-person team.

“Day to day it’s being in the lab, breaking things, pushing fluids around, and looking through the microscope to see what we did.” They dissolve proteins in solution, vary flow conditions, and image the resulting fibers with microscopes and atomic force microscopy to understand nanoscale assembly.

The goal is learning to control fiber assembly from molecular to macroscopic scales. When asked what happens if they are wildly successful, Tim responds: “We change where materials are made, how they’re made, what people think is even possible. A whole shift in manufacturing materials out of proteins—sustainable, without the toxic plastics we have now.”

The applications span domains: neural interfaces connecting body to electronics, prosthetics that feel like native tissue, artificial tendons for robots with biological-like actuation, biomedical scaffolds bridging soft tissue to bone. Protein-based fibers could dominate anywhere you need fibers with multi-objective performance—strong and tough and processable and biocompatible.

Why Ambitious Research Fails—And What Changes That

When asked why ambitious research fails, Tim’s answer centers on agency: the combination of funding, runway, and freedom from premature accountability.

“The things that will be very impactful are often things people think aren’t possible—or think are against the laws of physics because they misunderstand some piece of the puzzle. The people who see those paths have to battle against that and have enough resources, time, capability, and networks to prove it’s a different path forward.”

That’s what Brains provided: The clarity to articulate the idea, the connections to find traction, and the psychological foundation to persist. Brains took Tim’s two decades of accumulated insight and gave it somewhere to go.

“There’s a willingness to sacrifice some amount of your career toward this,” Tim says. “You have to be a little bit committed.”

Tim has been committed for twenty years—watching the gap between biological manufacturing and industrial practice, ping-ponging between disciplines, waiting for the right moment and the right structure. The bet is that evolution figured out fiber manufacturing millennia ago. Now he finally has the lab, the team, and the runway to steal its secrets.

You can learn more about Impossible Fibers here. You can find Tim on LinkedIn and X/Twitter.

Note: This piece was largely written by Claude based on a recorded conversation with Tim (that will be released separately).