Gulustan is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work focuses on discovering unique health-promoting compounds in milk and dairy streams and bringing them into practice and is supported by the UW Dairy Innovation Hub.

Gulustan was born and grew up in Turkey. She got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in food engineering from Ankara University in Turkey. During her master's, she developed edible films to extend ground beef's shelf life. Then, she moved to the US and completed her Ph.D. in food science with a designated emphasis in biotechnology from the University of California, Davis. During her Ph.D., her research focused on understanding the molecular mechanism used by the foodborne pathogen Yersinia enterocolitica to colonize humans and cause disease. Her curiosity about natural health-promoting compounds led her to continue her postdoctoral training at UC Davis, where she began developing human and bovine milk-based antimicrobials and prebiotics that led to industrial applications supporting healthy microbial communities.

Dr. Chao Wu has been working in the dairy industry for over 30 years, mainly on the development of dairy protein based food ingredients for various nutritional and functional applications. Chao joined Hilmar in 1998 and is currently the Director of Product Research, working with researchers in Hilmar and other organizations to understand the nutritional benefits of dairy derived specialty ingredients.

Chao received B. Eng. from JiangNan University in China, M.S. in Food Science and Ph.D. in Agricultural Chemistry, both from UC Davis.

QiQi leads the Applications Team for both cheese and ingredients, driving the commercial understanding of new products and improvements in existing products. QiQi joined Hilmar in 2010 and worked in the QA laboratory and Cheese Research and Development before joining the Applications Team.

QiQi holds a Master of Food Sciences from Kansas State University and a Bachelor of Chemistry from UC Berkeley.

QiQi believes increasing production yield to fill the demand gap and improving product quality to best optimize the functionalities of Hilmar products is key to helping our customers succeed.

KJ Burrington is the Vice President of Technical Development at ADPI, having joined the staff as a director in January 2021. Prior to her joining the ADPI staff, KJ served as the Ingredient Applications Program Coordinator for the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research (CDR). She has over 30 years of experience in product development including her past positions at Ridgeview Industries, the Keebler Company, and as a consultant to the baking industry.

In her previous position at CDR, she provided technical support for U.S. dairy processors and end users on dairy ingredient functionality and applications. She also provided technical expertise for food companies internationally through visits and seminars in conjunction with the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) to countries such as Mexico, Latin America, China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand. KJ has also been an instructor/presenter in various ADPI events and activities.

KJ holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also an IFT Certified Food Scientist. She has also served on the ADPI Center of Excellence since its inception in 2012.