in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Denver in 1998, followed by his Ph.D. in materials science from the same institution in 2000 under Maciej S. Kumosa, with his doctoral thesis titled, "Shear-Dominated Biaxial Failure Analysis of Polymer-Matrix Composites at Room and Elevated Temperatures.
[11] He has been serving as a director of the NASA Space Technology Research Institute (STRI) for Ultra-Strong Composites by Computational Design (US-COMP).
[6] Odegard has led a multi-institution effort in developing ultra-strong composites for deep space exploration using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polymers, employing computational modeling for accurate property prediction, and has received media coverage for his contributions, including features in publications such as Chemical & Engineering News,[17] CompositesWorld,[18] Nature World News,[19] and Space.com.
[20] For his efforts in leading US-COMP to achieve its goals, Odegard was awarded the NASA Outstanding Public Leadership Medal in 2023.
During his time at NASA Langley Research Center, he developed techniques to connect computational chemistry with continuum mechanics.
[22][23] Additionally, he developed a multiscale model for silica nanoparticle/polyimide composites, which integrated the molecular structures of the nanoparticle, polyimide, and interfacial regions into the bulk-level constitutive behavior.