Professor Coe gained his BSc in Physics from Newcastle University, and his PhD in Atmospheric Physics from UMIST for his work on the loss of nitrogen oxides and ozone from the atmosphere to natural vegetation. He carried our post-doctoral research at the University of East Anglia, working with Professor John Plane on the atmospheric chemistry of nitrate and halogen radicals. He was appointed to a lectureship in Physics at UMIST in 1997 and became Professor of Atmospheric Composition in 2007 at the University of Manchester. He is currently a visiting Professor at Fudan University. He was a co-Director of the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science between 2008 and 2014 and is currently the NCAS Site lead at Manchester.
He is an international leader in atmospheric aerosol science. He has made major contributions to the development of advanced mass spectrometric and optical methods to characterise particles in the air and laboratory and has pioneered the use of these techniques to important air pollution and climate processes working collaboratively with scientists globally to address these challenges. He has published over 300 peer reviewed publications and was the recipient of the 2022 Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal awarded by the EGU in 2022.