Tennent left Australia in 1986 to do a four-year postdoctoral fellowship with Prof Staffan Normark at Umeå University in Sweden.
[3][4][5][6][7] Tennet returned to Australia and joined the CSIRO as a senior research scientist.
Tennent has researched and given keynote presentations in the field of biotechnology and animal vaccines.
[10] Tennent has published 35 contributions in international peer-reviewed scientific journals (1984–2006) and eight reviews, theses and book chapters on microbial pathogenesis.
In 2019, Tennent was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE).