Mark Humphrey graduated and received his PhD and DSc at the University of Adelaide. He has held positions at Universität Würzburg (1987-1989), the University of Illinois (1989-1990), and the University of New England (1990-1994), before being appointed to ANU.

He has been awarded fellowships by the Krupp Foundation (Germany, 1987), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany, 1987), CNRS (France, 1988), Telecom Research Laboratories (1991), the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (1997), the Science and Technology Agency (Japan, 2001), the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK, 2002), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2009), as well as the Gritton Fellowship by the University of Sydney (1990).

He was also awarded the inaugural RACI Organometallic Award (1998), the RACI Inorganic Award (Burrows Award) (2008), the RACI H.G. Smith Memorial Award (2010), and the David Syme Research Prize (2001), an ARC Australian Research Fellowship (1994), ARC Senior Research Fellowship (1999), and two ARC Australian Professorial Fellowships (2004, 2009).

He has been Professeur Invité at the Université Rennes I (France), Visiting Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), and is an Honorary Professor of Nanjing University of Science and Technology and Anniversary Professor of Jiangsu University (China). He is the Australian Director of the Australia-China Joint Research Centre for Functional Molecular Materials, and Chair of the Inorganic Division of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. He was promoted to Professor at ANU in 2003.