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. In 2019 he was awarded the Trustee Award for Faculty Excellence, and in 2024 he received the Career Achievement Award.  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 2025, has or will run the IRIS Run for Refugees 5K, the Colchester Half-Marathon and the Brooklyn Half-Marathon. The most recent book he read is Making Room by Carl Siciliano.