In 1983 he obtained his Ph.D. in Policy and Organization at the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare of the Brandeis University.
In recent years, Marcus' research, teaching, and consultation have played a key role in national and international terrorism preparedness and emergency response.
Marcus has directed numerous projects intended to advance development of the negotiation, collaborative problem solving, and conflict resolution field applied to health related issues.
At the Harvard School of Public Health, he has received funding support from, among others, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, the W.K.
At the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, an initiative developed in collaboration with leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the White House Homeland Security Council, the United States Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense, Marcus, along with colleagues Joseph Henderson and Barry Dorn, pioneered development of the conceptual and pragmatic basis for "meta-leadership"- "overarching leadership that strategically links the work of different agencies and levels of government", and "connectivity" – the coordination of "people, organizations, resources, and information to best catch, contain, and control a terrorist or other threat to the public's health and well-being."
[4] Recent research activities have taken him to the center of leadership dilemmas facing emergency preparedness and response, from direct observation and in-the-moment interviews of central leadership during the 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Gulf Coast to the front lines of the Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, and 2014 Ebola outbreak.
[5] At the invitation of the President's Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, he has lectured at the White House on meta-leadership to a cross section of senior federal department officials.