08 November 2001

After attending Friends' School, Hobart, Damon gained a Bachelor of Pharmacy from the University of Tasmania in 1979. His supervisor was Dr Roger Rumble .

He spent several years in community pharmacy practice before embarking on a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

In 1983 Damon joined CIBA-GEIGY Australia Limited in Melbourne, initially as a specialist hospital representative, then in the company's medical department in Sydney with regulatory and clinical responsiblities for anti-inflammatory and anti-epileptic drugs. In 1988 he returned to Tasmania to pursue postgraduate research on the pharmacokinetics of chiral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in synovial fluid and plasma, leading to MPharm in 1990 and PhD in 1994. In 1993 he rejoined the pharmaceutical industry by accepting a position with Sandoz Australia as clinical project manager and in 1995 was appointed clinical research manager for the hospital product division of the company.

As fate would have it, Sandoz and CIBA-GEIGY merged globally in late 1996 to form Novartis and Damon transferred to the company's headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, where he was appointed International Medical Adviser for Rheumatology and was responsible for late-phase clinical development for some products of one of the world's largest health science companies. Dr Jack is a Fellow of the Australian College of Pharmacy Practice and more recently gained a EUCOR Certificate in Pharmaceutical Medicine via the medical schools of the upper Rhine Universities Basel, Freiburg and Strasbourg. The move to Switzerland gave Damon and his family (wife Elizabeth and three year old son, Charles) the opportunity to explore and enjoy the cultural delights of Europe. Damon and his family have recently transferred from Novartis corporate HQ in Switzerland to the global respiratory HQ in UK. They intend to return to Australia and eventually Tasmania in the future.