Mark Gales studied for the B.A. in Electrical and Information Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1985-88. Following graduation he worked as a consultant at Roke Manor Research Ltd.

In 1995 he completed his doctoral thesis and was then elected a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College Cambridge. He joined the Speech Group at the IBM T.J.Watson Research Center in 1997 as a Research Staff Member. In 1999 he returned to Cambridge University as a University Lecturer.

He is currently a Professor of Information Engineering and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. He has authored and co-authored over 200 papers in the Speech Processing Area. Mark Gales is a Fellow of the IEEE and was a member of the Speech Technical Committee from 2001-2004. He is currently an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Audio Speech and Language Processing and on the Editorial Board of Computer Speech and Language.