Mark Turner is a Professor of Food Microbiology and Deputy Head of School in the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability at the University of Queensland (UQ). Since completing his PhD at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) under the supervision of Prof Phil Giffard, he has undertaken postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Prof John Helmann (Cornell University, USA, 1999-2000) and in the CRC for Diagnostic Technologies (QUT) (2000-01). He subsequently supported his own position through being awarded a Dairy Australia Fellowship (2001-03) and an NHMRC New Investigator Grant (2004-06). He accepted an ongoing teaching and research position at UQ in 2007.

He heads a research team in the area of food quality and safety with current grants from Agrifutures Australia and the Australian Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA). He has previously had funding from ARC Discovery, ARC Linkage, ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub and ARC Industry Transformation Training Centre schemes as well as Dairy Innovation Australia Ltd (DIAL) Hort Innovation, and Geoffrey Gardiner Dairy Foundation (GGDF). His current research focus is in lactic acid bacteria applications using genetics, comparative genomics, biocontrol and texture/flavour characterisation methods.

Mark or his group members have presented invited or selected seminars in the US, UK, Italy, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Netherlands and China in food quality and safety. He has supervised 13 PhD and MPhil students to completion. He currently supervises 3 postdoctoral researchers and 4PhD students.

He teaches food microbiology, food safety and food biotechnology courses.

He is a member of the editorial board of the international peer reviewed Journal of Food Protection and mBio. Mark is a Fellow of the Australian Institute for Food Science and Technology and Australian Society for Microbiology.