Leadership
Ben Booth
CEO
Built the corporate software engineering function at Uber, leading teams across data engineering, internal tooling, and enterprise automation. Software and AI engineering research scientist at the University of Texas. Twenty years of experience shipping data-intensive products at scale. Writes code daily on the SoilMetrix platform.
Julie Bielski
Founding CTO
Senior Software Engineer at Google. BS from University of Michigan, MA from UNC Chapel Hill. Twenty-year track record building platform infrastructure and production systems. Architected SoilMetrix's field activation and soil test normalization pipelines.
Michael Ott
Strategic Ag Advisor
Co-founder and former CEO of Rantizo, the first company FAA-approved for autonomous drone swarming in agriculture. Winner of the 2021 PrecisionAg Entrepreneur Award. Advises SoilMetrix on ag market strategy and go-to-market.
Science
Pawel Wiatrak, PhD
Chief Agronomist
Former researcher at Clemson University's Edisto Research and Education Center, with prior work at the University of Florida. Published research on soybean planting optimization and seeding rate analysis that influenced production practices across the Deep South. Advises SoilMetrix on agronomic science and research methodology.
Bradley Miller, PhD
Faculty Inventor
Associate Professor at Iowa State University and director of the Geospatial Laboratory for Soil Informatics. Creator of Soilscape, Iowa's public soil analytics platform. Recipient of the Early Achievement in Research Award. Co-inventor of SoilMetrix's patented zone mapping technology.
Jeffrey White, PhD
Faculty Inventor
Professor in NC State University's Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Research spans site-specific soil fertility, remote sensing, and geospatial technologies for precision agriculture. Collaborates with NASA, EPA, and USDA-NRCS on soil characterization. Co-inventor of SoilMetrix's patented zone mapping technology.