Randolph Lewis
Ecomaterials Innovation Lab
Randolph Lewis has been a professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Wyoming since 1980. He served as Department Chair for five years and now serves as a special assistant to the Vice President for Research. Lewis’ research aims to provide a method to produce fibers with custom designed strength and elasticity through the study of spider silks. In the past 15 years his team has used DNA cloning to identify the proteins that make up all six of the different silks that spiders can make as well as the glue proteins used in their webs. His team then used that information to construct synthetic genes that make proteins in which the elastic or strength elements have been systematically varied. These proteins are still being tested but can currently produce fibers that have energies-to-break greater than Kevlar and steel. Lewis received a bachelor’s degree from CalTech and masters and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at San Diego, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology.