Following the completion of her Ph.D. studies, Coupland moved to Germany to continue her specialist pathology training at the Charité University Hospital Benjamin Franklin, FU Berlin between 1995 – 2002, obtaining a Klein Sprachdiplom from the Goethe Institute, Berlin in 1994, and completing her Facharzt ('specialist') examinations in Surgical Histopathology in 2002 at the Free University of Berlin, from where she was also awarded a Habilitation degree in Surgical Histopathology (Assoc.