Koe attended Lincoln High School and won a full scholarship to Reed College, where he majored in chemistry and wrote his undergraduate thesis on osmotic pressure.
[2] After graduating from Reed, Koe earned a master's degree from the University of Washington and a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology.
He and Welch began to synthesize and test new derivatives until they hit upon a highly selective and potent reuptake inhibitor they named sertraline; Koe published the first paper on it in 1983.
I was lucky to have been part of the golden era of the pharmaceutical industry, which gave me a unique opportunity for creative thinking and doing scientific research in technical areas outside of my chemistry training.
"[6]The American Chemical Society hailed the discovery of sertraline by giving Charles A. Harbert, Reinhard Sarges, Albert Weissman, Koe, and Welch the Award for Team Innovation in 2006.