Dr Dunlop is a senior lecturer in computer science.

His research focuses on usability of mobile systems including mobile text entry, sensor driven interaction and evaluation of mobiles. He is particularily interested in digital health applications of mobile HCI research and co-leads Strathclyde's Digital Health & Wellness Research Group and is a member of the Strathclyde iSchool Research Group, the Active Mobility Hub, and the Strathclyde Ageing Network.

He led the OATS EPSRC funded project on text entry for older adults and was co-investigator on grants looking at data modelling for city visitor prediction, supporting active commuting by bike, mobile support for carers' activity during the Covid-19 pandemic, mobile solutions to aid stroke survivors and evaluation of Commonwealth Games Legacy fund projects. 

Dr Dunlop was appointed as sub-committee programme committee chair for User Experience and Usability at ACM CHI 2016 in San Jose and 2017 in Denver. He also regularly acts as an associate chair (Tokyo 2021, Hawaii 2020, Seoul 2014, Toronto 2013, Paris 2012, Austin 2011, Amsterdam 2008). Together with Stephen Brewster and Chris Johnson of Glasgow University he co-founded the MobileHCI conference series in 1998 and has co-organised four MobileHCI (MobileHCI 04 at Strathclyde, MobileHCI 01 in Lille, MobileHCI 99 in Edinburgh, and MobileHCI 98 in Glasgow) and was programme co-chair for ACM MobileHCI 2019 in Taipei, Taiwan. He also sits on the international steering committee for MobileHCI and was programme co-chair for BCS HCI 2024. He is an editor of Springer's Personal and Ubiquitous Computing and a founding associate editor of IGI Global's International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction.

He is currently first supervisor for the following PhD students: Huda Banuqitah on fairer crowdsource working; Adel Dadaa on electric vehicle charge station prediction; Craig Speirs on the link between activity data and health outcomes; Joma Alrzini on user experience of English on-line testing; and Salem Naas on interactive video for health information provision to older adults. He has 8 PhD alumni (Majed Al Khan, Ramsay Meiklem, Ryan Gibson, Gennaro Imperatore, Karim el Batran, Frøy Bjørneseth, Andreas Komninos, and Nick Bradley) and 1 MPhil (Sohail Azad).

Using his long experience and knowledge of mobile-HCI research he has acted as an expert witness in mobile technology patent cases in Australia and USA. 

Dr Dunlop's teaching is mainly in human computer interaction (HCI) and mobile programming. Currently he is teaching modules on Mobile Application Development and User Centred Design. Together with Parisa Eslambolchilar and Andreas Komninos, he recently co-edited an ACM textbook on Intelligent Computing for Interactive System Design: Statistics, Digital Signal Processing, and Machine Learning in Practice.

Prior to joining Strathclyde, Mark was a senior researcher at Risø Danish National Laboratory (now part of DTU), and a lecturer at Glasgow University.