Professor Joshua Coon grew up in rural Michigan, where he enjoyed fly fishing and woodworking, even building several riverboats during high school and college. His interest in analytical chemistry stemmed from a love of building chemical instrumentation. After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2002, he moved to the University of Virginia, where he co-invented electron transfer dissociation (ETD).

Coon joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005 , where he is currently a professor of chemistry and biomolecular chemistry and holds the Thomas and Margaret Pyle Chair at the Morgridge Institute for Research. He also directs the NIGMS National Center for Quantitative Biology of Complex Systems. His program specializes in novel chemical instrumentation for studies ranging from basic biochemical questions to translational human research. To date, he has published over 400 peer-reviewed manuscripts with over 38,700 citations.

His contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Biemann Medal from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (2012), the Donald F. Hunt Distinguished Contribution Award (US HUPO, 2025), and the ACS Chemical Instrumentation Award (2023). Coon has mentored 39 Ph.D. graduates and 12 postdoctoral scholars and currently serves as the chair of the NIH Study Section MCST-56.