It is hard to find anyone who knows more about insects than Emily Bick. Not only does she possess an award-winning encyclopedic knowledge of insect trivia, but she has an extensive understanding of how bugs impact us (Entomological Society of America 2016 and Bick Lab Website 2025). Emily’s interest in bugs has always centered around their interactions with humans (Wiessing 2023). Her first introduction to innovation in the bug world was a high school project attempting to make a more powerful bug spray. This research helped her make her first contacts in the entomology community.
Her passion continued into college and grad school where she researched how bugs were building an immunity to pesticides. Through her projects and working with farmers along the way, she began exploring how farmers could achieve better pest control by optimizing their ecosystems (Wiessing 2023). During her postdoc at the University of Copenhagen, Emily created methods for farmers to redesign their apple orchards so that they were more resilient to pests, creating sustainable production (“UC Davis Alumnus Emily Bick” 2020). At UW–Madison’s Bick Labs, Emily has studied how pests contribute to crop loss and how plant diversity can discourage pests, as well as developed new techniques to manage pest control (Bick Lab Website 2025). Because pests consume 20-40% of global crop production every year (Gula 2023), Emily’s work is critical to global food supply and sustainability.
Read the full story here: https://teo.wisc.edu/2025/07/07/from-lab-to-launch-how-entrepreneurship-amplified-emily-bicks-impact-on-global-agriculture/