Odom joined Northwestern Universitys department of chemistry in 2002 and became the department chair in 2018. In 2010, she became the founding chair of the Noble Metal Nanoparticles Gordon Research Conference Between 2016 and 2018, she was associate director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology. Odom has worked on the editorial advisory boards of ACS Nano, Bioconjugate Chemistry, Materials Horizons, Annual Review of Physical Chemistry Natural Sciences, Nano Futures, and Accounts of Chemical Research. Odom became an inaugural associate editor for Royal Society of Chemistrys Chemical Science journal in 2009, a position she held until 2013. She was on the editorial advisory board of Nano Letters beginning in 2010 and became editor-in-chief in 2019. In 2013, she became a founding Executive Editor for ACS Photonics.