Mark S. Hipp studied Biochemistry at the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, and received his PhD at the University of Konstanz (2005). As a graduate student he worked on the effects of the ubiquitin-like modifier FAT10 on protein degradation in the Department of Biology, with Prof. Marcus Groettrup.

While working as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Ron Kopito at Stanford University he discovered that the inhibition of the proteasome observed in Huntington's disease is not direct, but can only be explained by a network-wide effect of the aggregates. He further expanded this hypothesis during his time as a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in the Department of Prof. F. Ulrich Hartl, where his group characterized the interactions of multiple different disease associated proteins with the cellular quality control machinery.

In 2019 Mark Hipp accepted a position at the University Medical Center Groningen, where he is continuing his investigation of the toxic effects of protein aggregates. Since 2020 he is also affiliated with the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.