[4] Although he entered college at the University of Rochester intending to become an engineer, Turner was encouraged by professors like John Jaenike and Andrew Dobson to pursue graduate work in biology.
[4] Turner began his graduate studies in the program of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine in 1989, working with Richard E. Lenski as his PhD advisor.
[6] During his time in Lenski’s group, Turner studied bacterial systems to address fundamental questions at the interface of ecology and evolution, such as the trade-off between horizontal and vertical transmission in parasites.
[7] Turner was a Whitman Center scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory from 2011 to 2015, where he also served on the faculty of the Molecular Evolution workshop and the Microbial Diversity course.
[11] Although Turner is known for his foundational work in viral evolution, he has recently begun to apply his insights towards advancing the development of phage therapy against antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.