Professor Curran's high school chemistry teacher told him not to major in chemistry, but like many headstrong teenagers, he did not heed that advice.  He earned an A.B. in Chemistry, magna cum laude, from the College of the Holy Cross in 1983, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1988 from M.I.T.  After a year of postdoctoral work in enzymology/molecular biology at Harvard  Medical School, Professor Curran joined the research staff at Alkermes, then a startup biotechnology company in Cambridge, MA.  From 1991-2000 Professor Curran was on the faculty at Holy Cross.  He came to Trinity in 2000.  In 2010 he received the Thomas Church Brownell Prize for excellence in teaching.  Professor Curran has been a co-author on 32 peer-reviewed papers; 18 of these papers have 46 different undergraduate student co-authors.  He lives in Wethersfield, CT and frequently bikes to Trinity.  Beyond Trinity Professor Curran is involved with his church, volunteering with social action projects; he is also a distance runner who, in 2017, has run the Aselton Snow Dash and the Keane Foundation 5K.