This is a postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Jan Rainey, in partnership between Rainey laboratory at Dalhousie University (http://structbio.biochem.dal.ca/jrainey/) and Halifax-based 3D BioFibR Inc. (https://3dbiofibr.com/), working in collaboration with Dr. John Frampton at Dalhousie’s School of Biomedical Engineering (https://www.framptonlab.com/). The Rainey lab has developed a variety of recombinant spider silks and processed these into fibres by hand-drawing (e.g., Xu et al. (2017) Biomacromolecules 18: 3678) and wet-spinning (e.g., Xu et al. (2019) Small 15: 1805294; Simmons et al. (2019) ACS Biomater Sci Eng 5: 4985) or into films (e.g., Baker et al. (2022) Adv Funct Mater 32: 22051778). In the present project, processing of these recombinant silks will be expanded into dry-spinning of fibres with the ultimate goal of developing new silk-based suture materials, supported by Dr. Michael Bezuhly (https://bit.ly/41FoVfL). The Rainey laboratory is well-equipped for recombinant protein production and purification and for biophysical and materials characterization (CD, FTIR and fluorescence spectroscopy instruments; light scattering instrument; optical microscopy; atomic force microscopy; tensile testing; and, a 600 MHz NMR spectrometer incoming later in 2023). Excellent Dalhousie-based protein biophysics (https://bit.ly/3AvBEpt), electron microscopy, NMR spectroscopy, proteomics, and optical microscopy core facilities are also routinely used by our lab. This fellowship is structured as a series of Intern units funded through an NSERC Alliance/Mitacs Accelerate grant with partner 3D BioFibR Inc. This will ensure substantial experience in working and interacting with 3D BioFibR alongside the academic lab-based aspects of the project.