Mark Runco earned his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the Claremont Graduate School in California and has studied creativity ever since. He is currently a Director of Creativity Research & Programming, Southern Oregon University, Ashland OR, USA He began his teaching career as an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, Hilo. He then taught at Cal State Fullerton for 22 years. He was also an adjunct professor at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration for nearly 15 years and lectured regularly at Universidad de Cantabria in Spain and Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an, China. He is a distinguished consulting faculty member at the Saybrook Graduate University in San Francisco and remains on the University of Georgia Graduate Faculty
Mark developed nine seminars on creativity, including "Creativity: What It Is and What It Is Not," "The Assessment of Creativity," "Creative Cognition," and "Social Contexts for Creativity." He is Fellow and past president of Division 10 (Psychology, Art, Creativity, and Aesthetics) of the American Psychological Association.
Mark also founded the Creativity Research Journal, which he still edits, along with two new journals: Business Creativity and the Creative Economy, and the Journal of Genius and Eminence. In 2010, Mark published the "rCAB" (Runco Creativity Assessment Battery), a comprehensive battery of tests for the assessment of creativity. He has published over 300 articles, chapters, and books on creativity, its measurement and enhancement. His textbook Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice has been translated into 10 languages. The 3rd edition will be published in 2020. He also was an Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Creativity, which was published in 1999 and the second edition, which was published in 2011.