After receiving PhD in Physics from Columbia University in New York city, Tsuruta has been working in Harvard University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Max-Planck-Institute in Munich Germany, etc., before she settled down as a tenured physics professor at Montana State University, Bozeman (MSU), Montana, USA until May 2016.
After Tsuruta retired from that tenured position, she has been continuing active at Montana State University as both emeritus professor and research professor, and also as affiliate professor at IPMU (Institute of Physics and Mathematics of Universe) in Tokyo University. She also served the following institutions as a visiting professor some time over the years: University of Cambridge UK, and ISAS (Space Institute in Japan), Tokyo University, Kyoto University, etc., in Japan.
Tsuruta’s research activity covers broad fields of astrophysics, ranging from compact stars such as neutron stars and stellar mass black holes, supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei, physics of black hole magnetospheres, gamma ray bursts, first stars and first black holes, and gravitational waves. Tsuruta received various honors and awards, including Marcel Grossmann Award in 2015 for her contribution to these broad fields in astrophysics, but especially for prediction of neutron star temperatures before her prediction of observability of neutron stars was validated by later observations.