Summary
During Curtis’ career, he has held several executive positions in government, non-profit and entrepreneurial firms. He has provided RDT&E program management support for over $300 million in investments into technological innovations across the Department of Defense innovation ecosystem. This includes regenerative medicine, manufacturing blood plasma derivatives and cellular therapies for tissue engineering, integrating digital diagnostic imaging systems for combat casualty care, introducing medical lasers for vision correction into the U.S. marketplace, and developing molecular diagnostics to identify blood-borne pathogens, select agents and emerging infectious diseases. Curtis has advised firms manufacturing healthcare innovations on commercialization pathways to obtain market clearance to distribute and export their products to markets in the U.S., Canada, Japan, the U.K. and the EU. As a management executive, Curtis completed several professional development programs including the Siemens Diagnostics Executive Management Program developed by the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. He also served on NIST’s Board of Examiners for Performance Excellence and has successfully led several organizational transformation programs. He is also a Lean Six-Sigma champion, and his teams have realized over $30 million in cost savings for a nation-wide supplier of health innovations generating $2 billion in revenues annually.
Research interests
- Examine ways to unlock the potential of innovation ccosystems to expand and sustain the development of a variety of innovation economies that synergizes inputs from university-led research, government, and partnerships with private capital to transition solutions developed by deep technology tech start-ups into dual-use markets (the defense and commercial markets) to address society's most pressing problems.
- Identifying commercialization pathways that combine technology developed at Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) with those developed at university-led research centers with capital sourced from government programs (RDT&E, post-Phase II SBIR-STTR and targeted funding for transition and scaleup) and those from private capital markets to facilitate technology commercialization and transitioning solutions into the marketplace. The objective is to develop co-investment strategies to accelerate technology commercialization, scalable business operations, manufacturing and the delivery of innovative solutions into the marketplace.
Education
Ph.D., University of California
M.S., Chicago State University
B.S., Chicago State University
Professional certifications
ISACA
National Contract Management Association (NCMA)
National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Venture Forward