John Ellerman (BSc, MASM, Consultant Microbiologist) John Ellerman is a science graduate (Microbiology and Biochemistry) from the University of Sydney and a Member of the Australian Society for Microbiology. He studied Dairy Technology at what is now the University of Western Sydney and worked as a dairy research microbiologist for the NSW Dept. of Agriculture. He worked as the microbiologist for Dairy Farmers Cooperative Ltd for seven years before joining what became part of Burns Philp & Co. Ltd. to conduct research into the fermentation of dairy cultures, including probiotics. During the 1990’s he served on the Advisory Board of the Food Science faculty at the University of Western Sydney (Hawkesbury) and on the Management Committee of the Government-funded Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Food Innovation at the University of NSW which included scientists from DSM (led by John), Goodman Fielder, UNSW and CSIRO Division of Dairy Research). The work that this team carried out led to the development of the LAFTI range of probiotic cultures and (with the help of researchers from CSIRO Division of Nutrition) to the elucidation of the synergist interaction between these cultures and several fibre ingredients which were shown to boost the numbers of probiotic culture cells to levels during their journey down the intestine that are unattainable by any other product. Via this technology the initial dose of 30 billion cells of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium lactis are possibly boosted to the equivalent of taking more than a trillion cells, thereby delivering unprecedented efficacy.