Dr Gurtler completed a Ph.D. program in 1996 at La Trobe University in the Department of Microbiology. The main contribution of this work was the development of a universal bacterial typing technique based on the 16S-23S rDNA spacer region. The technique is now extensively used in many areas of Microbiology including Diagnostic, Environmental and Veterinary Microbiology. Citations to the articles Dr Gurtler wrote on this topic total >1000 with >830 citations alone to the 1996 review published in the journal "Microbiology". Dr Gurtler wrote an invited review on genomic typing, taxonomy and identification of bacterial isolates for the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM). In addition to fundamental research, Dr Gurtler has also had experience with the application of this technology to the medical diagnostic laboratory in the fields of molecular microbiology and human molecular genetics.

Dr Gurtler has been involved full time in diagnostic microbiology over many years resulting in the adoption of a method that identifies Mycobacterium species directly from clinical specimens without the need for culture in specimens positive for acid fast bacilli, the discovery of Nocardia veterana, and the development of many diagnostic tests.In the last twelve years Dr Gurtler has been an Editor for the Journal of Microbiological Methods (JMM) and in the last 5 years Serial Editor of Methods in Microbiology (MIM) with the publication of 9 volumes covering diverse subjects such as Biofilms, Nanotechnology, COVID-19 and Fluorescent Probes.