Dr. Coakley is the chair of Diagnostic Radiology. He joined OHSU in August 2012 from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where he was a professor in residence in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging in the UCSF School of Medicine. He was also chief of the Abdominal Imaging Section and vice chair for Clinical Services in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging.

Dr. Coakley received his medical degree in 1988 from the School of Medicine, University College Cork, Ireland. His postgraduate training includes an internship at Mercy Hospital in Cork, medical residency at Mater and St. Vincent’s Hospitals in Dublin, and radiology residency at Leicester teaching Hospitals in Leicester, England. Dr. Coakley was a fellow in body imaging at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center before joining UCSF in 1997. During a year away from UCSF in 2000–2001, he was assistant professor and director, body MRI, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Dr. Coakley is an active clinician, teacher and researcher. He is involved in teaching at all levels, from medical students to postgraduate trainees. As Chair, he has worked to build productive teams, conduct successful recruitment, and develop a positive and equitable culture within the department. He has promoted distributed and inclusive governance, by significantly expanding and diversifying the departmental Executive Committee and by expanding the number and role of Vice Chairs. His scholarly activity includes a career total of just under $5M in NIH funding and over 270 peer-reviewed publications (Scopus h-index of 54). Since 2016, his research work has centered on developing a system that would allow for integrated endorectal MRI and in-bore targeted biopsy of the prostate, including the establishment of a small medical device company as an OHSU spin-off to attract small business grant funding. This reflects his longstanding interested in prostate cancer imaging and diagnosis. As a teacher, he finds educating the next generation of doctors to be both rewarding and stimulating, and is committed to involving young physicians in research.