Class of 2019
Dr. Miller is an urban pest management specialist for the Commonwealth of Virginia at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Va. In July 2018, she was honored with the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s inaugural “Healthy Homes Hero” award. This is just one of many formal and informal accolades she has received for her work focusing on optimizing cockroach baiting in urban housing. In addition, Dr. Miller is working on assessment-based pest management (APM) for bed bugs.
Working toward a bright future
Dr. Dini Miller strives to take industry professionalism, knowledge and success to the next level
Dr. Phil Koehler. (Photo: Dr. Dini Miller)
Dr. Dini Miller’s childhood and young adult years could serve as the inspiration for several Hollywood dramas. But she chooses not to dwell on what she terms a “colorful background.” She’d much rather focus on her solid circle of friends and loved ones in the here and now, and on the pest control industry research projects that keep her driven.
“If you had told me at 22 this is what I’d been doing, I’d have said you’re out of your mind,” admits Dr. Miller, an extension specialist and professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Va. “But throughout my life, doors open and I walk through them. And it’s turned out 5 billion times better than I could have predicted.”
A disinterested high school student, Dr. Miller found herself enjoying community college after accompanying a friend on a lark.
“The professors were there because they loved the coursework — they had day jobs, this was just extra for them — and it really showed,” she explains.
Over a seven-year period, she waitressed or worked in retail during the day, then took general education courses in the evenings. But she didn’t have a major, and didn’t get a degree.
“Both my grandmother and a good friend of mine, Therese, emphasized the importance of education,” Dr. Miller recalls. “Therese said, ‘Education is something that can never be taken away from you,’ and that has really stuck with me.”
Taking the advice to heart, at age 25 Dr. Miller began attending the University of California, Los Angeles, as a geography ecosystems major. In January 1989, at a low point personally, two things happened to her on campus on the same day: A Pentatomid stink bug landed on her notebook while she was trying to study, and later she walked past a newsstand with Time magazine’s famous “Planet of the Year” cover, noting that climate, globalization and other issues could mean the loss of certain insect species before they could even be discovered.
“These two things led me to think, maybe I should study insects,” she says.
Biology classes sparked her interest, and she focused on Tenebrionid beetles. A casual conversation seeking positive identification from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County led to Dr. Miller being a volunteer. It was there that she met then-Insect Zoo Director Dr. Art Evans.
“Art gave me my first insect net, my first Introduction to the Study of Insects textbook and my first insect collection,” she recalls.
Another twist of fate occurred when she applied for graduate school — to study Staphylinid beetles in cow dung piles with University of Florida (UF) professor Dr. Howard Frank. But he was unable to add her to his program, so she had her application circulated around the department.
“Then I got a strange call from a man who said ‘I can take you in the cockroach program. Tonight, we’re going to go visit a sewage treatment plant and let them crawl all over us! We collect 8 pounds of them every night,’” Dr. Miller says, still laughing about the phone call from fellow PMP Hall of Famer Dr. Phil Koehler (Class of 2015). “And then he said those magic words: ‘If you switch from beetles to cockroaches, I’ll fund you all the way through the Ph.D.’ I said, ‘OK, cockroaches it is!’ And from that day to this, it was the single best decision I’ve made, ever.”
APM, NOT IPM
Dr. Miller credits Dr. Koehler for leading by example — from public speaking to getting real-world pest control experience for more useful research. After graduation from UF in 1998, she was hired at Virginia Tech as an urban pest management specialist, first working on termites. She then turned to ant research when several of her graduate students were focused on that pest. By 2004, bed bugs had become front-page news, and Dr. Miller again shifted her focus.
These days, however, she has come full circle back to German cockroaches. She is spreading her gospel throughout the industry that instead of integrated pest management, which stems from agriculture and assumes there’s a pest threshold with which the account is comfortable, we should be using assessment-based pest management, which focuses on seeing how big the pest population is, and performing regular treatments and follow-ups until the count goes to zero.
“I’ve made it a personal mission now, to get rid of cockroach infestations despite the level of sanitation,” she explains. “For 25 years, the industry has been saying, ‘Oh, we’ll never get control in public housing because residents won’t clean up.’ I’m saying if you count the cockroaches, bait in the right places and keep at it, you totally can. We should be heroes who can save the day, no matter what. And I love standing up in meetings, showing the results we’re getting and telling them that if I, ‘just a girl,’ can get results, they can, too.”
Quotes from fellow industry members
“Dini Miller is an exceptional scientist and expert communicator. She has an ability to captivate an audience with her combination of wit and fascinating facts. She comes from a background culture that is a unique mixture of a California liberal, laidback drama student with a pioneering scientific precision. Utilizing her landmark educational strategies, she has become one of the most influential educators for the pest management industry. She is also a joy to be around.”
—Dr. Phil Koehler, University of Florida, PMP Hall of Fame Class of 2015
“There are few people that have had a greater impact in the pest management industry than Dr. Dini Miller. Her world-renowned research on cockroaches and bed bugs has directly changed the way we manage these pests. However, I find Dini the most impressive when she is teaching our industry. She has an uncanny ability to teach difficult concepts in a relatable way; her passion and enthusiasm for pest management is undeniable each time she walks onto a stage.”
—Dr. Jim Fredericks, National Pest Management Association