Turk’s primary research interests are in computer vision and machine learning, augmented and mixed reality, and human-computer interaction. He has received several best paper awards and has been general or program chair of several major conferences, including CVPR, WACV, ACM Multimedia, IEEE Face and Gesture Recognition, and International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI).

He brings a dynamic background of academic, industry, and entrepreneurial experience to the role of President. In 2000, Turk helped to found the Vision Technology Group at Microsoft Research, and he brings additional industry experience gained in working with a small Silicon Valley company and a large aerospace company. In 2014, he co-founded a startup company that spun out from NSF-funded research in his lab and was acquired in 2016. He is a Fellow of the ACM, the IEEE, and the IAPR and was the Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies.