David Nate Breslauer
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I make hard things real.

From silk proteins and mycelium leather to applied AI for discovery. And the companies that ship them.

Bolt Threads

Co-founded in 2009. Built and scaled three product lines: Microsilk, b-silk, and Mylo. Protein and mycelium materials taken from molecular design through fermentation, manufacturing, and brand-name product.

Synthetic biology / biomaterials / fermentation / commercialization

AI Protein Polymer Platform

A DARPA-funded LLM-and-transformer pipeline that mines protein polymer designs from the scientific literature. The platform turns thousands of fragmented papers into a structured dataset, with architecture to scale to over a million.

Applied AI / LLMs / protein polymers / literature mining

Voices from the Archive

A multimodal LLM platform that translates the 150,000-page multilingual Iraqi Jewish Archives, making them publicly accessible at judeoiraq.org. An 'Ask the Archive' Q&A interface lets readers ask plain-English questions and trace every answer back to the original page.

Applied AI / multimodal LLMs / multilingual NLP / archives / cultural heritage

Microsilk

Bolt Threads' first product line. Recombinant spider silk produced by fermenting engineered yeast, spun into fiber, and knit into garments. Shipped with Stella McCartney and adidas. A Microsilk gold dress was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art.

Recombinant silk / biomaterials / fibers / fashion

b-silk

A bioengineered silk polypeptide for hair and skin, produced by fermentation and shipped as a functional ingredient in commercial products from Amika, Goddess, Vegamour, and Haus Labs.

Recombinant silk / biomaterials / cosmetics

Mylo

Bolt Threads' second technology stack: a leather alternative grown from mycelium, tanned and finished into commercial-grade hides. Shipped through the Mylo Consortium with Adidas, Kering, lululemon, and Stella McCartney. Stella McCartney's Frayme Mylo was the first mushroom leather handbag on a Paris Fashion Week runway.

Mycelium / biomaterials / sustainable leather / fashion

Nature's Antifreeze

Productized nature's antifreeze proteins. With Ginkgo Bioworks on DARPA's ICE program, took ice-binding proteins from polar fish, insects, fungi, and bacteria toward real formulations for extreme-environment use. Bolt led formulation, stress-testing, and the path to product.

Ice-binding proteins / biomaterials / cold environments

CellScope

A fluorescent microscope built on a cell phone, developed during my PhD in Daniel Fletcher's lab at UC Berkeley. Designed for low-cost remote diagnostics of malaria, sickle cell disease, and tuberculosis. The research was later spun out into CellScope, Inc., which commercialized a smartphone otoscope.

Mobile microscopy / remote disease diagnostics / open hardware

Reaction Rumble

A chemistry fighting game in the browser, where matchups are powered by real reaction logic. Elements come to the arena with their own personalities, movesets, and grudges. Sodium picks fights, oxygen finishes them. Chemistry with hitstun.

Chemistry / education / game

About

Co-founded Bolt Threads in 2009. Built and scaled three product lines: Microsilk (recombinant spider silk), b-silk (beauty polypeptides), and Mylo (mycelium leather). Protein and biomaterials taken from molecular design through fermentation, manufacturing, and brand-name product. Scaled the company from a Berkeley lab to commercial production.

PhD in bioengineering at UC Berkeley / UCSF on silk. Part of the foundational research that became Bolt Threads. Built CellScope as a side project along the way.

Currently working on applied AI for discovery, from cultural artifacts to scientific knowledge. Multimodal LLMs and transformers applied to large, fragmented corpora. Based in Oakland, CA.

Selected advising & boards

Selected papers

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