Biography

Dr. Odeny is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a Visiting Research Scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute. A practicing medical oncologist and implementation scientist, he works on lymphoma and HIV-associated malignancies and on widening access to cancer clinical trials in resource-limited settings, particularly across Africa.

He founded and leads the Global Oncology Initiative, a United States and Africa research platform that embeds implementation science into cancer clinical trials, with institutional partnerships across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Nigeria. He is Principal Investigator of Africa RISEN, which serves as coordinating secretariat for the Local Implementation Science Networks consortium across nine African countries, and of an NCI U01 evaluating a 3D imaging tool for Kaposi sarcoma treatment monitoring in East Africa.

A recipient of the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Award (2023) and the Robert A. Winn Clinical Investigator Leadership Award in Oncology (2026), he is a member of the AIDS Malignancy Consortium. He mentors early-career investigators as Kenya PI of the Africa Leadership Training for Oncology Researchers (ALTOR) program and as Associate Director of the HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Implementation Research Institute (HIGH IRI) at Washington University.