Joshua Coon, professor in the Departments Biomolecular Chemistry and Chemistry, was among eight faculty awarded a WARF Named Professorship in 2026. The honor comes with $100,000 and recognizes faculty who have made major contributions to the advancement of knowledge, primarily through their research endeavors, but also because of their teaching and service activities. Award recipients choose the names associated with their professorships.
Coon, who is now the John E. P. Syka Professor of Biomolecular Chemistry and Chemistry, holds the Thomas and Margaret Pyle Chair at the Morgridge Institute for Research. He is Director of the NIH-funded National Center for Quantitative Biology of Complex Systems, where he leads a strategic effort to disseminate next-generation measurement technologies to the biomedical community. Coon is an international authority in mass spectrometry whose work bridges fundamental chemical instrumentation development with transformative biological discovery. He is best known for the co-invention and development of Electron Transfer Dissociation tandem mass spectrometry, a technology that revolutionized the characterization of proteins and their post-translational modifications, and Parallel Reaction Monitoring, a cornerstone method in targeted proteomics. His recent work pioneers the integration of mass spectrometry with cryo-electron microscopy through matrix-landing, opening entirely new avenues for structural biology. With over 400 peer-reviewed publications and over 40,000 citations, his laboratory’s research spans instrumentation, proteomic methodology, metabolomics, lipidomics and complex systems biology. He holds over 50 patents and is the co-founder of CeleramAb Inc., a biotechnology company dedicated to the rapid characterization of biotherapeutics. Coon’s impact has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the ASMS Biemann Medal, the HUPO Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award, the ACS Chemical Instrumentation Award, the Pittcon Analytical Chemistry Award, and the US HUPO Donald F. Hunt Distinguished Contribution in Proteomics Award. He is a passionate educator and mentor, directing the North American Mass Spectrometry Summer School and training dozens of scientists who now hold leadership roles globally.
This announcement originally appeared on research.wisc.edu.