[1] In 1966, Sutherland joined the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) and was soon appointed Head of Immunology Research, a position which he held for 28 years.
[4] In the 1970s, he developed the pressure immobilisation technique (a first-aid procedure) for both snake and funnelweb bites,[5][6] replacing treatments such as tourniquets that were often harmful to the patient.
[7] In 1994, CSL was privatised and the antivenom research program was closed, prompting Sutherland to leave the organisation for the University of Melbourne.
Here he founded the Australian Venom Research Unit, where he worked until 1999 when striatonigral degeneration, a condition similar to Parkinson's disease, forced him to retire.
When he died in 2002, he had already written his own death notice: "Struan would like to inform his friends and acquaintances that he fell off his perch on Friday, 11 January 2002, and is to be privately cremated.