Professor Teri Odom

Winner: 2020 Centenary Prize

Northwestern University

For seminal work on multi-scale materials that enable new ways to achieve ultrafast, coherent, and directional light emission at the nanoscale.

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Learning the language of different fields — while rooted in chemistry — will enable multiple, unique convergent approaches to solve difficult problems and open new areas of science.
Professor Teri Odom

Professor Odom’s group aims to make precious metals more precious by controlling their nanoscale shape and organisation into lattices, resulting in new materials that can interact with light in special ways. For example, they have designed one of the world’s smallest lasers whereby metal nanoparticles can squeeze light into very small volumes that can then be amplified by gain media. This year is the 60-year celebration of the invention of the laser; at the time, the developer stated that the device was a solution seeking a problem. Now however, the laser is ubiquitous, from eye surgery to checkout readers to optical communication. In Professor Odom’s case, she is interested not only understanding how nanolasers work but also their potential in applications, such as non-invasive stimulation of biological processes or imaging diseased tissue.

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Professor Teri W. Odom is the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Chemistry Department at Northwestern University. She is an expert in designing structured nanoscale materials that exhibit extraordinary size and shape-dependent optical and physical properties. Professor Odom has pioneered a suite of multi-scale nanofabrication tools that have resulted in plasmon-based nanoscale lasers that exhibit tuneable colour, flat optics that can manipulate light at the nanoscale and hierarchical substrates that show controlled wetting and super-hydrophobicity. She has also invented a class of biological nanoconstructs that are facilitating unique insight into nanoparticle-cell interactions and that show superior imaging and therapeutic properties because of their gold nanostar shape. 

Professor Odom is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Materials Research Society (MRS), the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. Select honors and awards include: the ACS National Award in Surface Science; a Research Corporation TREE Award; a U.S. Department of Defense Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship; a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship at Harvard University; the ACS Akron Section Award; an NIH Director's Pioneer Award; the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award; the National Fresenius Award from Phi Lambda Upsilon and the ACS; an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Nano Letters.

She received her BS in Chemistry from Stanford University and PhD in Chemical Physics from Harvard University. Odom carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard University before starting her independent career at Northwestern University in 2002.

Q+A

What has been your biggest challenge?

Gaining credibility in new research areas. I tend to like to work on complex problems that require multiple disciplines to solve. I also like to stretch beyond our recognized area of expertise and explore new, convergent ones. However, this approach to scientific discovery often encounters challenges. I am grateful that my group is both nimble and persistent and that we’ve been able to achieve advances in fields beyond that which we started. 

What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?

Chemistry in today’s world is simultaneously becoming more inclusive and more the central science. I recommend being a student of chemical literature, reading broadly, and considering the social sciences even as fundamental knowledge in chemistry is gained. Learning the language of different fields — while rooted in chemistry — will enable multiple, unique convergent approaches to solve difficult problems and open new areas of science.

Why do you think interdisciplinary research and collaboration is important in science?

The most pressing societal problems that science can address are intrinsically complex. Therefore, integrating expertise from different disciplines is necessary just to even understand the problem, not to mention getting started. In recent years, science has trended toward becoming more collaborative — and I have taken full advantage of this! The research that has brought me the most satisfaction has usually involved two or more collaborators, where the big result wouldn’t have been possible without everyone’s distinct contributions.

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