Bill Charman: The power of focus
Professor Bill Charman AO.
Professor Bill Charman AO retired from Monash University this year after more than three decades of service, including 12 years as Dean. His achievements leave the Faculty and the sector in a very different place from where he found it.
Bill Charman says he would not have forecast the arc of his career when he was an undergraduate at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in the late 1970s.
“I was a pretty average student,” he says. “I only enrolled in pharmacy because I enjoyed chemistry at school and my chemistry teacher told me it would be a good option, so I did as I was told. I didn’t really know why I was there or what it would lead to.”
“But, in some ways this helped me: because I didn’t know what I wanted after university, I was open to all possibilities.”
The specific possibility that changed Bill’s trajectory was when Professor Barry Reed took him aside and told him about an upcoming guest lecture at the College. It was to be delivered by Professor Takeru Higuchi, then Regents Professor of Pharmacy and Chemistry at the University of Kansas.
“Come to the lecture, sit in the front row, and pay attention,” Professor Reed, himself a University of Kansas alumnus, implored him.
“I did and for me it was a ‘sliding doors’ moment,” Bill says. “From that day on, I knew I was going to Kansas - even though I had never left Australia or even been on a plane.”
What inspired Bill - and motivated him to work hard enough to win a Victorian College of Pharmacy scholarship to study abroad - was Professor Higuchi’s ability to describe science and chemistry as a mechanism for improving the world through better medicines.
The lecture also provided Bill inspiration for how he would later come to view student development when he himself was Dean.
“Looking back, I probably had little right to be there, but fortunately Professor Reed saw something.”
“This lived experience helped form aspects of my future approach to support students – you never know what’s going to inspire them or capture their focus. So it’s essential to provide as many thought-inspiring and exciting opportunities as possible – and then leave it to them to chart their own pathway.”
“So you make every opportunity available to everyone and it’s up to them whether they want to avail themselves of it.”
From Kansas to the pharmaceutical sector
Bill says completing a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry in Kansas introduced him to a whole new world.
“At the time, it was the best place for pharmaceutical chemistry in the world," he says. “The intensity of research and the quality of the graduate coursework was on a different level.”
Bill was also struck by the school’s links with the international pharmaceutical sector. Many of the world’s largest and most innovative drug companies teamed up with the school to undertake joint research projects. They also used it as a pipeline to recruit scientists.
In 1985, when he was awarded his PhD, Bill followed this very pathway, staying on in the United States to work in drug development for Sterling Drug in New York.
“It was the real deal,” he says. “You got to contribute to making medicines in a way that just wasn’t possible in Australia at that time, and it was a lot of fun.”
But it wasn't just the intellectual and scientific stimulation Bill enjoyed. He also appreciated working in a high performing, dynamic company, and the chance to get a firsthand look at what drove them to succeed. It was an experience that would stay with him throughout his career.
An ‘experiment’ in academia
In 1989, Bill returned to Australia to take a job in academia, lecturing at the College - a move he says was initially an ‘experiment’.
“Not really knowing what the role would entail, the plan was to give it a couple of years and if it didn’t work out, I figured I could always go back to America,” he says.
However, any escape plans were scuttled when Bill and Professor Susan Charman used their experience to also establish the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation (CDCO) with support from the Victorian Government and Monash University: a contemporary and collaborative research centre that supports drug development optimisation with partners in Australia and around the world.
“Sue and I had established great links with international companies based on our time in the US,” Bill explains. “And we were also doing some great locally partnered work as well, and it all started to quickly gather pace.”
“Momentum is a wonderful thing, because it allowed us to also start hiring the best people too. For instance, we managed to convince Chris Porter to come to Australia and join us.”
Sue has led the CDCO for the past 20 years – it has achieved so much through its sector-wide impact, scientific advances and collaborative drug discovery projects. It was also a key catalyst for helping establish the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science (MIPS) in 2007.
In the 1990s, Bill became an adviser to the World Health Organisation on malaria drug discovery and was part of multiple malaria drug discovery projects through the Medicines for Malaria Venture in Geneva. These projects were awarded the Drug Discovery Project of the Year in 2001, 2006, 2007 and 2010, and he was a member of the MMV’s Expert Scientific Advisory Committee (2005-11).
Breaking down the walls
Then, in 2007, Bill was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Monash, setting the stage for the next successful chapter in his career. Not that he takes too much credit for it.
“You can only ever be as good as the people that went before you,” Bill explains. “And I was fortunate that the Victorian College of Pharmacy had been well led throughout its whole history.”
“I was especially lucky that I came in after the previous Dean, Colin Chapman, who had done all the hard work integrating the College into the university.”
“That was a fabulous move. Monash was the ideal fit because it is a young, ambitious university and they always supported what we did. My job was basically to help harness the opportunities others had worked so hard to set up.”
To this end, Bill's experience had shown him that any workplace depended on the talent within it, and the ability of management to create an environment in which they could produce their best work.
“If you get the brightest people, treat them with respect and give them everything they need to do their job to the best of their abilities, it’s an unstoppable combination,” Bill says.
To do just this, he set about identifying and eliminating any barriers to collaboration across the Faculty. He also looked at ways to enhance both its teaching and research capabilities, an approach that led to the Faculty adopting new curricula, as well the founding of MIPS.
Bill also formed the PharmAlliance partnership with the University of North Carolina and University College London - a move that involved cross-border collaboration on education and research. This was something he saw as vital in helping pharmaceutical science achieve its potential.
The proof of the pudding
“My philosophy on education and research is really simple – use it to make tomorrow better,” Bill says. “Our discipline more than virtually any other has the opportunity to do that by contributing to better patient- and community-health outcomes.”
“That’s really what has guided every decision I’ve made - how can we live up to that goal every day? I tried to keep that simple philosophy in everything we did.”
For Bill and for Monash, the approach paid off. Under his leadership (which ran until 2019), the Faculty was consistently ranked the No. 1 program in Australia and the Asia Pacific. For the past eight years Monash has ranked among the top three universities in the world for Pharmacy and Pharmacology in the annual Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject.
This makes Monash’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences the highest ranked program in any discipline, in any Faculty, in any university in Australia.
Then, in 2021, Bill was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to industry and tertiary education, particularly in the pharmaceutical sciences - something he says reflects a collective effort.
“We had an exceptional group of people, who came up with exceptional ideas – and they then did exceptional things,” Bill says.
“All you needed to do was to give people what they needed to succeed and to never rest on your laurels,” he says. “Yesterday’s newspaper wraps up today’s fish and chips.”
A new chapter
L-R: Arthur Christopoulos and Bill Charman.
On 13 September 2024, Bill retired from Monash University after more than three decades of service. Dean Arthur Christopoulos says that Bill leaves both the Faculty and the sector in very different places from where he found them.
“There are simply not enough words to express the unparalleled impact that Bill Charman has had on our Faculty, our university and our profession,” he says.
“The impact of Bill’s truly transformative achievements cannot be overstated; they have made our Faculty the research and education powerhouse that it is today, and will forever be an indelible part of the Faculty’s DNA.”
It’s this approach to his work and his life that leads Chris Porter, Director of MIPS, to describe Bill as a genuine “force of nature”.
“Bill has what I believe to be a unique ability to inspire people to work hard and with great gusto, while at the same time letting them enjoy what they do,” Chris reflects.
“He leads by example and has worked effectively across the academic, industry and professional spheres to push the Faculty forward in a pretty unusual way for an academic.”
“More than anything, Bill could recognise good people and bring the best out of them by creating an ethos of collective effort and collaboration - something that carries forward through the Faculty today.”
