Sunland Analytical |
Dr. Oliphant’s background crosses multiple areas of education and practical experience including biochemistry, agronomy, business and information technology. Dr. Oliphant obtained his doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis and his MBA at National University. He was a tenured professor at the University of Virginia where he taught and ran a research lab of postdoctoral fellows, technicians and students for thirteen years. During this same period, he owned and managed a profitable cattle ranch producing premium quality beef and establishing unique marketing and distribution processes.
Seeking new challenges, in 1989 he co-founded Sunland Analytical which was established to provide soil, plant and water analysis for the agriculture, landscape, geo-technical and environmental industries. He developed much of the analytical processes and has closely participated in the analysis of the more than 1,000,000 analyses that Sunland has processed. Additionally, Dr. Oliphant has given numerous presentations nationally. He has published more that 80 scientific papers along with providing many "how to" articles(~50) on soil remediation, agronomic practices, and tips for landscape soil management.
As a part of developing Sunland, Dr. Oliphant found it very advantageous to create computer programs that transformed, evaluated, formatted and reported data acquired by the laboratory. After several hundred thousand lines of code and the recognition that programming was most enjoyable, he created a division of information technology within Sunland Analytical. To provide for his breath of understanding and professionalism desired for Sunland’s clients he completed classes and tests to become an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP). He has subsequently managed projects and developed Oracle applications for government and private industry.
As Sunland’s General Manager, Dr. Oliphant currently provides consultant input for chemical, soil science, and information technology solutions for a spectrum of Sunland’s.
Mr. Horney is laboratory manager and acts as the primary consultant for many projects submitted to Sunland. As graduate level agronomist, with a Masters degree from the Univeristy of California - Davis, Mr. Horney has particular expertise in assess plant performance in saline and sodic-saline environments, as well as, statistical modeling for spatial variation in developing site specific management of various primary soil parameters.
In addition to his duties as vice president and laboratory manager at Sunland Analytical, he has been an active participant in soil salinity research at U.C. Davis. He has co-authored papers on saline soils, “ Development of Site Specific Management for Reclamation of Salt Affected Soil Utilizing Preliminary EM-38 and Core Soil Sample Data” and “ Use of Yield Monitoring to Evaluate Site Specific Management in Reclamation of Salt Affected Cotton Field”. Mr. Horney is laboratory manager and the cofounder of Sunland Analytical.
Over more than 20 years he has actively participated to some extent (i.e., developing methodology, conducting analyses, providing QA/QC, evaluating and/or supervising the analysis process, etc.) in virtually all of the more than a million analyses carried out by Sunland Analytical. Further, he provides his extensive expertise in site remediation and amendment recommendations for agriculture, landscape and envioronmental purposes.