Turnquist has been a Cornell faculty member since 1979, specializing in transportation systems. From 1984 to 1986 he served as associate dean for computing in the College of Engineering. During the 1986-87 academic year he was a visiting professor at General Motors Research Laboratories, and in the 2000-2001 academic year he was a visiting professor at Sandia National Laboratories. Since 1988, he has played a major role in the Master of Engineering program in engineering management.
Turnquist is a past chairman of the Transportation Science Section of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences, and is a member of the Transportation Research Board, the Production and Operations Management Society, and the IEEE Engineering Management Society. He serves as a consultant to government agencies on infrastructure security issues and to companies in the transportation and manufacturing industries on logistics issues and the application of large-scale network optimization methods.
