Turner joined Washington University in 1983 as an assistant professor in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments.
[7] In 1988 he founded the Advanced Networking Group and co-founded the Applied Research Laboratory with Washington University colleagues Jerome R. Cox and Guru Parulkar.
[9] In 2000 Cisco acquired Growth Networks for $355 million in stock, largely for the intellectual property and engineering talent.
He is now a Senior Professor for the department, and still likes to perform research when he is not sailing the Florida coast or playing tennis with his wife.
[citation needed] Jonathan S. Turner has been awarded 30 patents for his work in switching systems, and has many widely cited publications.
In 1990 he was elected as an IEEE Fellow for "contributions to multipoint switching networks for high-speed packetized information transmission".
[14] In 2000 he was awarded the IEEE Millennium Medal [15] In 2001 he was elected as an ACM Fellow for research involving and extending his 1986 seminal paper.
[19] In 2006 Turner was named the Barbara J. and Jerome R. Cox Professor of Computer Science for "advancing the relationship between theory and practice in the design of digital systems.
Also that year the Computer Science department created the Turner Dissertation Award in recognition of his many achievements and research contributions.