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, and in 2019 he was awarded the Trustee Award for Faculty Excellence.  Professor Curran has been a co-author on 33 peer-reviewed papers; 19 of these papers have 51 different undergraduate student co-authors.  He lives in Wethersfield, CT and frequently bikes to Trinity.  Beyond Trinity Professor Curran is involved with his church (St. Patrick-St. Anthony in Hartford), where he co-facilitates the LGBTQ+ Friends and Family Support Group. He is also a distance runner who, in 2022, has run the Colchester Half-Marathon and the Keane Foundation 5K (1st place in his age group); next up is the Hartford Half-Marathon in October.  The most recent book he has read is The Guncle by Steven Rowley.

• “Parallel Arrangement of Peptides Appended to a Rigid, Bimetallic Constrained Ring System”, T. P. Curran, A. Marrone, L. M. Davidson, N. Pokharel, J. F. Frempong, I. Tolbatov, M. L. Phillip, C. B. Gober, H. Yang and J. Stewart, Pept. Sci., e24286. https://doi.org/10.1002/pep2.24286 (2022).
• “Cyclic and Non-Cyclic Pi Complexes of Tungsten”, T.P. Curran, in Comprehensive Organometallic Chemistry IV, (eds. Gerard Parkin, Karsten Meyer, Dermot O’Hare), 257-377 (2022).
• “Controlling Peptide Conformation Using Tungsten Alkyne Coordination”, T.P. Curran, in Advances in Bioorganometallic Chemistry (eds. T. Hirao and T. Moriuchi), 95-112 (2019). 
• “Conformationally Rigid Cyclic Tungsten Bis-Alkyne Complexes Derived from 1,1'-Dialkynylferrocenes”, T. P. Curran, A. P. Lawrence, T. S. Murtaugh, W. Ji, N. Pokharel, C. B. Gober and J. Suitor, J. Organometallic Chem., 846, 24 (2017).
• “Synthesis and Conformational Behavior of Metallacyclicdipeptides Derived from Coordination of Side Chain Alkynylamino Acids to Tungsten”, T. P. Curran, T. A. McTeague, V. D. Nguyen, C. J. Yennie, P. R. Handali, J. P. Sanderson-Brown and Z. D. Dworsky, J. Organometallic Chem., 806, 12 (2016).
• “Introducing Aliphatic Substitution with a Discovery Experiment Using Competing Nucleophiles”, T. P. Curran, A. J. Mostovoy, M. E. Curran and C. Berger, J. Chem. Educ., 93, 757 (2016).
• “Alkynyl ß-Sheet Peptidomimetics Retain Their Anti-Parallel Sheet Conformation When Coordinated to Tungsten”, T. P. Curran, A. N. Boynton, S. M. Berk and E.-M. Pedro, J. Organometallic Chem., 782, 31 (2015).
• “Conformational Behavior of Symmetrical and Unsymmetrical Mono(Alkynylpeptide)-Tungsten Complexes”, T. P. Curran, W. E. Smith and P. C. Hendrickson, J. Organometallic Chem., 711, 15 (2012).
  

• Trinity College Trustee Award for Faculty Excellence, 2019.
• NSF-RUI, "RUI: Investigations of a Novel, Bimetallic Ring System for Nucleating Beta-Sheets", $234,957, 2015-2018.
• NSF-ARI, "Renovation of Chemistry Research Laboratories at Trinity College", $746,231, 2010-2012.
• Thomas Church Brownell Prize for Teaching Excellence, 2010.
• CBIA/Pfizer Summer Undergraduate Research Awards (2), "a-Helix Nucleation via Crosslinking of Amino Acid Side Chains with 1,1'-Diaminoferrocene", and "a-Helix Formation via Coordination of Dialkynylpeptides", $10,000, 2007-08.
  
• Bristol-Myers Squibb, Undergraduate Research Awards in Organic Chemistry, "a-Helix Nucleation via Crosslinking of Amino Acid Side Chains with 1,1'-Diaminoferrocene", $5,000, 2007-08.
  
• NSF-MRI, "Acquisition of a Bruker Avance 400 MHz NMR Spectrometer", $308,000, 2006-07 [Co-PI Richard Prigodich]
• CBIA/Pfizer Summer Undergraduate Research Award, "Synthesis of a Helical Metallacyclicpeptide", $5,000, 2006-07
• Bristol-Myers Squibb, Undergraduate Research Awards in Organic Chemistry, "Synthesis of a Tricyclicdipeptide - A Potential a-Helix Template", $5,000, 2006-07.
• CBIA/Pfizer Summer Undergraduate Research Award, "Synthesis of a Constrained, Bicyclicdipeptide Possessing a Trans-Proline Amide", $5,000, 2005-06
• Bristol-Myers Squibb, Undergraduate Research Awards in Organic Chemistry, "Use of Ferrocene to Nucleate ß-Turns", $5,000, 2004-05
• NSF-RUI, "Nucleating Peptide Secondary Structures via Metal-Alkyne Coordination", $146,000, 2003-06.
• Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award: "Creating Peptide Tertiary Structures by Linking Enforced Peptide Secondary Structures", $60,000, 1998-2003
• Pfizer, Inc. - Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship, $5,000, 1998-99
• NIH-AREA, "Binding to and Inhibition of CD26 by Cis-Prolines", $110,847, 1997-2001
• NSF-RUI, "Neighboring Group Effects in Intramolecular Reactions", $124,000, 1995-98