The son of a Pennsylvania preacher, Philip Koehler made his way to Florida courtesy of the U.S. Navy. Eventually he became a Professor of Urban Entomology at the University of Florida. He’s developed a mosquito and fly trap that uses a minimal amount of insecticides, and he also has developed a trap for bed bugs. He patents inventions because “you can write an article for a scientific journal and no one will ever use it."

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:38

Bugs. We're back to talk about something that everyone who lives or is from Florida is very familiar with and very happy to have on Radio Cade this morning, Dr. Philip Koehler, who is a professor of Urban Entomology at the University of Florida. Thanks for being with us Phil.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 0:51

It's wonderful to be here with you.

Richard Miles: 0:53

Phil, I know if I tried to describe your technology I would completely mess it up. So I'm going to ask you to sort of tell me a little bit about your, your core technology core invention , um , and explain it as if , uh , and in this case, very realistic scenario. I don't know anything about it.

Dr. Philip Koehler: 1:11

Yeah, we, we started back in , uh, back in around 2010 or so trying to take on flies and mosquitoes as very dangerous animals that needed to be controlled because they , uh, they are very important from the standpoint of human welfare. There were very few products that were environmentally friendly to be able to control these , uh , these potential disease factors. And we'd gotten some funding from the military in order to develop, first of all, fly traps. And second of all , um , mosquito traps in order to be able to control them. And we've, we've developed several new technologies that have now been patented and are in the process of being commercialized throughout the entire world.

Richard Miles: 1:53

And so if I understand correctly, these technologies , um, they're, they're mostly not, or do they have anything to do with sort of insecticides or sprays or anything, or these are different types of pest control?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 2:05

Everything that we've done utilizes insecticides, however, they are contained so that people won't contact them. And also they're not a danger to the environment because they are contained.

Richard Miles: 2:16

Okay, so they're not like sprayed on a field or they're more in receptacles or containers?

Dr. Philip Koehler: 2:23

Exactly. We're, we're putting them associated with something that the insects like to go to. So you don't have to, you don't have to spray large areas of land. And that was one of the things that I was concerned about back in 2015, that the state of Florida, in order to control Zika factors, u h, they were spraying by air, over large tracks of land. And in many cases, that was the only thing that they had available to them.

Richard Miles: 2:50

Okay. So I think, I