She received a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard University in 2001. Odom is a materials chemist who combines top-down fabrication and bottom-up synthesis to control architecture at the 100-nm level. She has developed large area, multiscale nanopatterning tools to create noble metal (plasmonic) structures that can manipulate light at the nanoscale. Odom is using her Pioneer Award to develop new types of plasmonic materials that can resolve subcellular structure in three dimensions and without labels. Odom’s honors include a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award, an American Chemical Society ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Fellowship, a DuPont Young Professor Award, and a Rohm and Haas New Faculty Award.