His research interests include protein and enzyme function and modification, interferons and cytokines, signal transduction, and gene expression.

[1] Stark and his family moved to semi-rural Maryland (around the Washington, D.C. area) at the start of World War II.

The family remained there until Stark was through his third year of high school, after which they relocated back to New York City, NY in 1950.

He later served as a chair of the advisory committee at the Center for Gene Regulation in Health and Disease at Cleveland State University, and he assisted in development of the Cellular and Molecular Medicine Specialization (CMMS) program that was jointly offered by Cleveland State University and the Lerner Research Institute.

In graduate school at Columbia, Stark investigated ascorbic acid oxidase, which was concentrated in the skin of yellow crook-necked squash, and focused specifically on the role of its sulfhydryl groups.

Upon further chromatography analysis and acid hydrolysis of the modified proteins, Stark came to the conclusion that cyanate indeed reacts with amino and sulfhydryl groups, with the latter being a more rapid reaction.

[3] Stark and his colleague Derek Smyth then used these findings to develop a new method of determining the N-terminal residues to assist with sequencing peptide chains.

Aspartate transcarbamylase is one of the first three enzymes necessary for de novo synthesis of pyrimidine nucleotides, and after Stark was able to isolate this protein complex in hamster cells, he then treated them with PALA and found this pathway inhibited.

[6] Furthermore, with another colleague Randall Johnson, Stark began testing the use of PALA as a treatment for tumors in mice cells, with significant rudimentary results.

[8] They were then able to use gel electrophoresis and cellulose chromatography paper to isolate mRNA molecules, and then probe them with complementary DNA strands.

[9] A similar method was used for identification of proteins, leading to the method referred to as the Western blot.,[10] variations of which were also reported by two other groups, working independently at about the same time: Harry Towbin and coworkers in Basel, Switzerland, and W. Neil Burnett in Robert Nowinski's lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who also coined the name "Western" blotting.

[13] Interferons induce antiviral activities, inhibit cell growth, control apoptosis, and are implicated in promoting immune responses.

[16] In 2015, Stark and his wife endowed a graduate scholarship at the Center for Gene Regulation in Health and Disease at Cleveland State University.