Ag Metrics Group Leadership Team

The leadership team at Ag Metrics puts together academia, practical experience, state-of-the-art equipment, and facilities with scientific knowledge and field experience to bring you clear, well-documented and properly conducted experiments that will solve problems and optimize product development programs. Find out more about our team or better yet, call us or send us an e-mail to get acquainted.
Frank V. Sances, PhD
​Owner & Founder
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Frank Sances, the company’s founder and CEO, holds a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Biology from California Polytechnic University Pomona and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Entomology and Plant Physiology from the University of California, Riverside (1980). He has published dozens of peer-reviewed and popular scientific articles in the areas of Entomology, Acarology, Plant Physiology, Plant Pathology, and Agronomy. He is a consultant to agribusiness, grower cooperatives, academic institutions, and government.  He remains active in several professional societies and has produced dozens of accredited and well attended seminars in Pest Management. He is active in the California Central Coast community and was elected to the local school board in 2000. He is a frequent invitational speaker and a vocal advocate for coastal environmental protection. Beginning with his upbringing in the UK and Spain, and later in California, he has always been interested in studying and preserving living systems. He promotes sustainability; agricultural, environmental, and societal.
 
Frank’s crop experience and publications focus on strawberry agronomic best practices, leafy greens IPM, solanaceous crop production, and forensic agronomy. (Sances et.al. 1978-2020).
 
Frank is widely travelled domestically and internationally, and rotates frequently among the CA, FL, and MI company research centers.

Pacific Ag Research

Brad Booker, PhD
​Soil Sciences
​Station Manager
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Read more About Brad
​Brad is a graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where he earned a Master’s Degree in Crop Science. Brad has both American and international agricultural experience. He worked in production agriculture in Central America and has been managing science studies at Pacific Ag Research since 2008. He started as a biologist in California and then relocated to Florida to start the Thonotosassa research station.

He has been serving as Western Area Manager since 2017 and has since moved back to California. Brad has had two publications: He also holds an FAA Part 107 License and a Pest Control Advisor License.
 
Memberships
Vishal Shinde, PhD
​Entomology
​National Business Director
Read more About Vishal
​Vishal was born and raised on a farm and that is where his passion began. He decided to get a bachelor’s degree in Botany before getting a Master’s degree in Agrochemicals and Pest Management in India. After that, he pursued his Ph.D. in the same department, but this time specializing in Biological Pest Management in sugarcane and predatory spiders. He joined India’s biggest sugarcane research organization for 9 years before bringing his expertise to Pacific Ag Research. He won a Gold Medal at STAI (Sugarcane Technologists' Association of India) in 2005 and has published 84 national and international papers, journals, and seminars. His scholar link is : https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=m3NbY_cAAAAJ&hl=en

​​Post Doctoral – University of California, MESA, Berkeley

Memberships (Professional related to Agriculture):
Oscar Cuevas
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​Operations Manager

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Read more About Oscar
Oscar Cuevas began his career in Agriculture in 1990 studying Agriculture and Plant Sciences for an A.S. Degree. He became the Operations Manager for a large Central Valley farming company and in 2000 he left to become a Research Technician for an agricultural products manufacturer. In this role, his focus was on establishing and evaluating field trials on vegetables, fruit, nuts, and most intensively on grapes against Phylloxera and nematodes. He travelled extensively to work with scientists, growers, and regulatory agents in an expansive product development program with promising soil fumigants.

In 2003, he joined Pacific Ag Research as a Research Technician specializing in precision applications of foliar and soil applied products on a wide variety of crops. During this tenure at Pacific Ag Research, Oscar also worked in Florida, Arizona, and Michigan collaborating with company scientists as a Field Research Specialist. This involved research with all types of crop improvement products; from fertilizers and bio-stimulants, to foliar applications in row, field, and orchard crops.  

​In 2009, Oscar became the Operations Manager with Pacific Ag Research for 7 company farms in California. In 2016, Oscar was given the Central Valley research station at Five Points, California. This 70-acre facility conducts field trials on warm weather crops such as melons, cotton, almonds, grapes, stone fruits, and most any other central valley crop. Oscar’s group now grows over 25 different crops at the Five Points Ranch and has even grown tobacco and many GMO and other transgenic crops at this site. Oscar supervises a team of advanced biologists and farm managers for on-station trials and works closely with commercial growers from the region to secure sites for off-station trials from Sacramento south to Bakersfield.

Florida Ag Research

Balaji Aglave, PhD
​Pathology & Nematology
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Read more About Balaji
​Balaji Aglave is the Plant Pathology Director at Florida Ag Research. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Sciences and completed his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Agriculture Biotechnology and Plant Pathology from the NRCC, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India (2008). He has published over 100 peer-reviewed and popular scientific articles in the areas of Plant Pathology, Plant Biotechnology, Plant Virology and Nematology. He is author of one of the most popular Plant Pathology books in the world published by CRC press (Taylor and Francis group). The book, Handbook of Plant Disease Identification and Management has been sold in over 50 countries.

He also served as an Associate editor, editorial board member and reviewer of dozens of peer reviewed journals. He has been an active member of the American Phytopathological Society and has served on multiple advisory boards and academic committees in different Universities.

Dr. Aglave has been honored by several awards among the scientific community. He has received the “Young Scientist Award” and “Honorary fellow” Award from the Microbiologists Society and Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding and the Indian Phytopathology Society.

Current research is focused on development of new techniques to conduct laboratory bioassays for nematodes, fungal, and bacterial plant diseases. His laboratory is also involved in developing innovative molecular and qPCR based methods of plant disease studies. The crops under study in his laboratories include strawberry, tomato, citrus, potato, cucurbits, pepper, green and dry beans, ornamental, and Turf.  He is well known cricket player in Tampa Bay area and likes to spend time with kids and family.
Mariano Galla, PhD
​Station Manager & Agronomy
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Read more About MARIANO
​Mariano was born and grew up in Italy where he received a bachelor’s degree in agronomy and a master's degree in degree in agronomy with focus in plant pathology. Shortly after graduating, Mariano joined a contract research organization in Australia where he worked with various roles at various locations for four years. In 2014, he relocated to the US where he pursued his Ph.D. in Horticulture and Agronomy (with emphasis in Weed Science) at UC Davis. Before joining Ag Metrics Group, Mariano worked as UC Extension Advisor in Agronomy and Weed Science and as North America Herbicide Development Manager for ISK Biosciences Corporation. 

Membership:
Weed Science Society of America 
​NAICC - National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants

Michigan Ag Research

Brian Cortright
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Pathology
Station Manager
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Read more About Brian
Brian was raised on a Michigan dairy farm. He received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in Wildlife Biology and Biometrics. In 1987, he started his agricultural research career at Michigan State University. He was a staff researcher in the department of Plant Pathology working with vegetables and field crop diseases. Brian mentored many graduate students through the years and continues to maintain industry contacts throughout the Midwest. While at MSU, Brian was recognized in several commendations including the Jack Breslin Distinguished Staff Award. After almost 30 years, in 2014, Brian retired from MSU and joined Pacific Ag Group to develop the Michigan research station for their Great Lakes area projects. Brian’s specialty is soil borne and foliar diseases of vegetables, breeding for disease tolerance, forecast modeling, and countless bio efficacy trials on fruit, field, greenhouse, and vegetable crops. Brian has conducted on-farm research with over 40 commercial growers across the state of Michigan and Wisconsin. Brian was one of only two people working on fumigant alternatives for Michigan Vegetable Growers from 2002 to 2013. Brian is an expert in soil fumigation, soil borne disease control, disease forecasting model development, and grower extension. Brian has a commercial applicator license for field crop, fruit, vegetable, and fumigation categories.

Membership:
​​NAICC - National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants

Reporting

Megan LeBlanc,
​PhD
Reporting & Data Analysis
Read more About MEgan
Megan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology and a Masters in Biotechnology from Fresno State, and a PhD in Plant Pathology, Physiology and Weed Science from Virginia Tech. In her early career, she worked on environmental stress responses on Bt cotton field research at Dow AgroSciences, as well as field, lab and greenhouse trial work. In graduate school she received an NSF Fellowship for interdisciplinary study and worked to characterize RNA mobility between plants.  Currently, she manages data processing for all our sites and summarizes reports across the United States with complete statistical analysis and professional presentation of results for a wide array of field and lab trials. She is a member of the American Phytopathology Association. 

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