John is a foundation member of the Nutrition Society of Australia and was honorary secretary from 1976 to 1978. John completed his degree in Agricultural Science and PhD titled, ‘Utilisation of protein and energy in growing lambs’, at the University of Melbourne in 1970. John describes himself as a 'reductionist' scientist with a strong desire to understand underlying mechanisms, but then to integrate the knowledge quantitatively back into a whole system for application, principally through simulation modelling. His research specialised in comparative physiology and nutrition across many animal species including the hyrax, sheep, beef and dairy cattle, pigs, broiler chickens, laying hens and honeybees. John was a Chief Research Scientist and Assistant Chief at CSIRO Division of Animal Production, Prospect NSW. In 1996 he started his own Research Management company, coordinating major projects for the rural R&D organisations and private companies. Projects included understanding how cereal grain structure and chemistry alters nutrient availability for different animal types and developing rapid methods for predicting nutritional value of grains and pulses. Another project was to understand the biochemistry of methane production in ruminants and to develop methods for mitigating methane emissions and reduce their greenhouse gas impact on the environment. More recently John has been managing a project to understand the science behind the degradation by industrial emissions of the 50,000+ year old indigenous rock engravings on Murujuga in northwest Western Australia.