By Georgia Jackson, College of Arts and Sciences
Mosquito season is well underway in the Tampa Bay area, and Ryan Carney needs your help.
Ryan Carney received the 2025 Excellence in Innovation Award for his patented AI technologies and innovative teaching and outreach.
An associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, Carney leads a team of researchers who use artificial intelligence to identify disease-spreading and invasive mosquitoes. The project relies on citizen science data from three partner apps to keep tabs on mosquito populations in the Tampa Bay area and beyond.
"These citizen science apps enable people to report these mosquitoes, and that helps us scientists understand the biodiversity and risk in the area," said Carney, who received the 2025 Excellence in Innovation Award in April for his patented AI technologies and innovative teaching and outreach.
Mosquito observation data from , and NASA鈥檚 appear on the , which supports real-time monitoring worldwide and provides valuable data for mosquito control efforts in Hillsborough County and elsewhere across the globe.
"We have a lot of mosquito species here," Carney told in a recent interview. "There's a huge diversity 鈥� over 90 species of mosquitoes. Fourteen of those are Anopheles, which spread malaria."
The world鈥檚 deadliest animal
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies the mosquito as the world鈥檚 deadliest animal due to the role it plays in the spread of diseases like malaria, dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya and lymphatic filariasis.
Female mosquitoes drink the blood of birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals to get protein and other nutrients necessary to their development and ability to lay eggs. In doing so, some species pick up viruses, parasites or other bloodborne pathogens that can be transmitted to future victims.
Mosquitoes are responsible for almost 700 million infections and 1 million human deaths each year.
Powered by artificial intelligence
The smart trap employs AI algorithms to identify the species of each mosquito it photographs.
Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, Carney is working with Sriram Chellappan of the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing to develop and patent a trap that uses artificial intelligence to identify the disease-carrying insects.
Carney hopes the smart trap, which attracts and photographs mosquitoes and employs AI algorithms to identify the species, will serve as an early-warning device for local authorities by alerting them to a rise in risk to public health.
鈥淭hat mosquito species information is then shared with the user,鈥� said Carney, who was recently elected to and the . 鈥淎nd, so, we can get a sense of what mosquitoes are in a specific area remotely, accurately and very quickly.鈥�
Carney and Chellappan think the device could be produced for under $150, allowing for wide distribution and application. The team will conduct field trials before deploying the device in the Tampa Bay area and in select areas in Africa.