Thomas Miller

Research Specialization

I am responsible for teaching insect physiology and toxicology. My research started on the physiology of the insect circulatory system then switched to insect neurophysiological techniques aimed at describing the mode of action of neurotoxic insecticides. I briefly studied insecticide resistance in cotton pests coinciding with the introduction of synthetic pyrethroids, and then worked on the physiology of cotton pests, especially diapause in the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders). I was asked by USDA-APHIS to explore strategies for improving the sterile insect technique for controlling pink bollworm by replacing radiation with conditional lethal genes. In the summer of 2004 we created our first transgenic pink bollworm with a functioning lethal RIDL gene supplied by Luke Alphey of Oxford University. Our collaborators in USDA-APHIS have applied for permits to field release these transgenic insect strains meant for population suppression. Work on insect transformation brought us in contact with Professor Frank Richards at Yale Medical School who pioneered paratransgenesis for use in disrupting insect-vectored transmission of human diseases. Frank suggested that paratransgenesis could be used to control any insect-vectored plant disease in California. Dave Lampe of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh in 2004 created our first transgenic symbiotic bacteria that produce a lethal gene product that neutralizes the pathogenic bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa that is carried by leafhoppers and causes Pierce’s disease in grapevines. We call this new strategy, Symbiotic Control. The Environmental Protection Agency calls this a microbial pesticide.

Experts on Demand

Degrees

BA Mathematics/Physics 1962: University of California, Riverside
PhD Entomology 1967: University of California, Riverside

Awards

2010 U.S. Department of State, National Academies Jefferson Science Fellow
2006 - Plenary Lecturer, International Symbiosis Congress, Vienna
2005 - Verrall Lecturer, Royal Entomological Society, London
2004 - Plenary Lecturer, Plant Protection Congress, Beijing
2004 - G.J. Mendel Honorary Medal for Merit in the Biological Sciences, from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
1986 - NAS Eastern European Exchange Program
1978 - 1979 National Academy of Sciences Eastern European Exchange Program
1968-69 - NATO Fellow

Mendel Award Ceremony 2003

Recommended Reading

Freakonomics

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life-;from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing-;and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Blowback

In the wake of the Cold War, the United States has imprudently expanded the commitments it made over the previous forty years, argues Johnson. In Blowback, he issues a warning we would do well to consider: it is time for our empire to demobilize before our bills come due.

Guns, Germs and Steel

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies,Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

Collapse

As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society’s apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.

Tom Miller Research Group

Thomas Miller

Research Specialization

Degrees

Awards

Recommended Reading

Freakonomics

Blowback

Guns, Germs and Steel

Collapse

Tom Miller Lab

COLLEGE OF NATURAL &
AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

Thomas Miller

Research Specialization

Degrees

Awards

Recommended Reading

Freakonomics

Blowback

Guns, Germs and Steel

Collapse

COLLEGE OF NATURAL & AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

COLLEGE OF NATURAL &
AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES