Biography

Background

Curtis hails from Townsville in Australia’s tropical North Queensland, where he completed his BSc at James Cook University (Townsville). His research honors year was completed under the supervision of Dr Murray Davies and Professor Richard Keene in the development of a home urine test kit for the colourimetric detection of trace and toxic metals. For his PhD Curtis’s main focus was on the synthesis of ligands and metal complex to serve as models for native metalloproteins that contained more than one metal centre in the active site. The potential of these model complexes to serve as catalysts for the oxidation of olefins with hydrogen peroxide were also investigated.

Current Work

Curtis’s post doctoral research is focused on the cocrystallisation and metal complexation of species containing the S-(O)1-2 and O-S-N moieties. The goal of this research is to control the crystallisation of API’s by the addition of excipients to form cocrystals with the active ingredients. The inability to control polymorphs is a major problem, faced every day by the pharmaceutical industry.