Dr. Coates was educated and started his career in the UK. His first position was as an analytical chemist working for Castrol Oil Company. He graduated with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and obtained his PhD in analytical chemistry at Brunel University with an initial focus on Raman Spectroscopy. Dr Coates has 50 years of industrial experience. After moving to the USA as a Senior Staff Scientist at Perkin Elmer Corporation, Dr. Coates accepted positions at Spectra-Tech (Stamford, CT) and then at Nicolet Instruments (Madison, WI), and eventually returning to a position at PerkinElmer’s Real-Time Systems Division (Wilton, CT), a joint-venture with Dow Chemical Company (Midland, MI). In 1996 Dr Coates opted to leave the corporate world and formed his own company, Coates Consulting LLC.

Since 1996 he has built Coates Consulting LLC, a network consulting group focused on applied and industrial instrumentation, optical spectroscopy and analytical instruments and sensors for dedicated applications. His main focus for the company is on instrument miniaturization and spectral sensors. Dr Coates has devised and developed more than 100 different instrument and sensor products for dedicated analyses and has worked with major corporations in major industry sectors; including Pharma, environmental, industrial (chemical and consumer products), aerospace, computer technology and medical. He was co-founder of Sentelligence, a businesses for the development of products based on miniaturization; Sentelligence. In addition, Dr Coates also held the position of Director of MCEC (Measurement and Control Engineering Center), an industrial consortium at the University of Tennessee.

In 2013 Dr Coates received the Williams-Wright Award for Industrial Spectroscopy, presented by the Coblentz Society at Pittcon 2013.