Curtis received his B.S. in 2000 from Baylor University where he concentrated in Biology and Chemistry. Following undergrad, he was a technician for two years at Baylor College of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Adrian Lee studying growth factor signaling in breast cancer. He received his Ph.D. in 2010 from Vanderbilt University in Cell and Developmental Biology under Dr. Ethan Lee. In graduate school, he discovered a novel therapeutic for the treatment of colon cancer. He conducted postdoctoral studies as an American Cancer Society Fellow at University of Texas Southwestern in the laboratories of Dr. Steven Altschuler and Dr. Lani Wu (now at UCSF). There he developed a high throughput method for culturing intestinal stem cells combined with automated cell imaging. Using these approaches, he discovered novel drug combinations for the treatment colon cancer. While at UT Southwestern, Curtis received a NIH Pathway to Independence Award with additional training in kinase biochemistry in the lab of Dr. Melanie Cobb. In 2017, Curtis took a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Arizona. He is also a member of the BIO5 Institute and the University of Arizona Cancer Center.