Dr. Turkstra is currently a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. He serves on the Board of Directors for the not-for-profit Purdue Student Publishing Foundation (PSPF). He also enjoys occasionally dabbling in digital system design, serving as a consultant for a number of start-ups including Microfluidic Innovations, LLC.

From August 2005 through July 2006, Dr. Turkstra was a Charles C. Chappelle Fellow at Purdue. For the three academic years spanning 2005-2008, he served as an Instructor for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. For seven years beginning June 2009, he was a full time Software Engineer with the HUBzero group in the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue University. In January 2017, Dr. Turkstra began serving as one of the first two Professors of Practice of Computer Science at Purdue. He was promoted to the rank of Associate in August 2023. In 2024, the faculty voted to change titles from Professor of Practice to Teaching Professor.

Dr. Turkstra's research interests revolve around pedagogical tools and support of Computer Science curriculum with a focus on large enrollment classes. His expertise lies primarily in the areas of operating systems and distributed systems as well as, to a lesser degree, security. Current research activities include PeerVal, a peer evaluation system; C-Lab, a test module framework for C; Eastwood, a code style linter for C; EnCourse, a system for real-time class project analytics and tracking; and LewisStructures.net, an educational chemistry resource. Each of these systems have been used by thousands of students in dozens of offerings for various courses here at Purdue and, in some cases, around the world.

Previous research activities include a prototype thin client EDA environment based on Sun's GridEngine and Sun Ray Server software as well as a multi-petabyte storage area network (SAN) research project operated by the Engineering Computer Network. Dr. Turkstra also created Metachory, the first distributed, virtual operating system.

Dr. Turkstra was awarded the ACM Faculty Award for “best faculty member” by vote of Computer Science’s undergraduates in 2022. He received the College of Science Team Award in 2019. He was a teaching academy Nominee in 2023. He has been nominated for the Favorite Faculty Award in 2021 and 2024. He was the recipient of the Graduate Student Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2006 and the Magoon Award for Outstanding Teaching Assistant in 2005.