After receiving his BS, he worked as an associate chemical engineer at the Westinghouse Electronic Corporation in Baltimore, MD.
There he began working nights at the Brady Urological Research Laboratory in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
[citation needed] With a $500,000 grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb, he began collaborating with the Drew Pardoll and Bert Vogelstein on the nuclear matrix where DNA is replicated.
[6] He served on several scientific advisory and directorial boards: The Donald S. Coffey lectureship was established in 1991 by the Society for Basic Urologic Research.
Awardees have included Carlo M. Croce, Philip Beachy, Kenneth Pienta, Ronald A. DePinho, William G. Nelson, Charles L. Sawyers, Frank McCormick, Angela Brodie, Peter Jones, John C. Reed, Gerald Cunha, Carol Prives, William R. Fair, Webster Cavenee, Curtis C. Harris, Harold L. Moses, Bert W. O'Malley, and Judah Folkman.