[Photo: Dr. Eli Ordan and Dr. Ariel Livne, co-founders of Diptera.ai, alongside Dr. Filipos Papathanos of the Hebrew University. Courtesy of Diptera.ai]

Diptera.ai’s flagship project has reached a major breakthrough. After three years of intensive development—and in partnership with the BIRD Foundation, which supports industrial collaboration between Israel and the United States—the Israeli company has completed a full end-to-end system based on the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), a biological method for mosquito control that relies on releasing sterilized males.

The project delivered a complete operational chain for Anopheles mosquitoes, including rearing, sorting, sterilization, marking, and AI-driven monitoring. The system was subsequently validated on live mosquito populations in Kenya and a second African country. With each technological milestone now achieved, Diptera.ai is preparing for the next step: widescale field trials across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The company was founded in response to the urgent global need to curb the spread of malaria, a disease that kills hundreds of thousands each year. Traditional control methods are losing effectiveness, while SIT offers a clean, targeted alternative that avoids chemical pesticides. Historically, large-scale SIT deployment has been constrained by the inability to sort larvae at high throughput, the lack of reliable training data for AI models, and insufficient real-time monitoring tools.

Diptera.ai has now removed these bottlenecks. The company developed optical-imaging systems capable of detecting sex organs in larvae, a water-flow mechanism for processing large volumes, and a fully automated AI pipeline that generates high-quality labeled datasets without manual intervention. In partnership with U.S.-based Vectech, the team also created the Scout trap—equipped with UV illumination and machine-vision algorithms—to identify marked mosquitoes in the field and map population dynamics in real time.

During the project, the work expanded to additional major Anopheles species, including gambiae and coluzzii, significantly increasing market impact. All components—rearing, sorting, sterilization, and field hardware—were re-engineered, tested, and adapted to local conditions in semi-natural African facilities. Results demonstrate full technological readiness: near-perfect larval sex-sorting accuracy, 97% precision in detection models, and reliable field monitoring through the Scout platform.

Diptera.ai is now targeting initial deployments in multiple African countries, in collaboration with governments, researchers, and global health organizations. Beyond the technological achievement, the company views this milestone as a foundation for a systemic shift in how malaria is fought—moving mosquito control toward a fully automated, data-driven, AI-enabled discipline.

Dr. Eli Ordan, Diptera.ai co-founder, said:
“The support of the BIRD Foundation is instrumental in accelerating our joint effort with Vectech to combat the growing threat of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. This cross-border collaboration allows us to merge advanced AI-driven monitoring with cutting-edge vector-control technologies, creating a scalable solution for malaria prevention. BIRD’s involvement is not only a vote of confidence in the urgency of the mission, but also a catalyst that helps transform scientific innovation into real-world impact.”

Omer Carmel, Director of Business Development at the BIRD Foundation, added:
“BIRD’s investment and guidance in this project highlight our commitment to breakthrough technologies capable of addressing critical global challenges such as malaria prevention. Working with Diptera.ai and Vectech enabled us to support AI-based solutions that deliver tangible results in the field, demonstrating BIRD’s role as a bridge for groundbreaking collaboration between Israeli and American companies.”