His research expertise is in the field of space science, cosmology, astrophysics and is a member of several space-based and NASA sounding rocket experiments and instrumentation aimed at understanding the early universe, first stars, and galaxies.
He is a member of the ESA's Herschel Space Observatory-SPIRE Instrument Team and several NASA astrophysics missions planned for this decade, including the Inflation Probe.
He has contributed to topics in field such as halo model of the galaxy distribution in the large-scale structure,[2] and has developed ways to measure and quantify physical properties of dark energy and dark matter in the universe.
Cooray is also a science editor of Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP).
Cooray attended Royal College, Colombo, Sri Lanka, for secondary education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology for undergraduate studies in physics and mathematics, and completed a PhD in astrophysics in 2001 at University of Chicago under Wayne Hu.