Michael O’Donnell received his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, where he worked under Charles Williams Jr. on electron transfer in the flavoprotein thioredoxin reductase. He performed postdoctoral work on E. coli replication with Arthur Kornberg and then on herpes simplex virus replication with I. Robert Lehman, both in the biochemistry department at Stanford University. O’Donnell then became a member of the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College in 1986 and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1992 before moving to The Rockefeller University in 1996. O’Donnell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.