He studied medicine at St George’s, qualifying in 1988. He obtained a PhD in Parasite Immunology at the Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, supported by a Medical Research Council Clinical Training Fellowship. Professor Cooper then moved to the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases at the National Institutes of Health as a Fogarty International Fellow where he studied helminth immunology. He returned to St George’s in 2000 as a Lecturer in Infection and Immunity to study the interaction between parasite infections and allergy, work supported by the Wellcome Trust.

In 2010 Professor Cooper moved to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to take up a chair in Parasitology.  He returned to St George’s in 2013 to take up a chair in the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases.