NEWPORT-A Cocke County High School alumnus is now studying at England's prestigious Cambridge University.

William Bradley "Brad" O'Dell, son of Joy Drew and Cathy O'Dell, Newport, graduated from University of Tennessee-Knoxville in May, 2009. He is the grandson of the late Monroe "Budge" and Eulala (Crum) O'Dell and the late Lawrence and Glennie (Williamson) Stinnett.

Prior to his graduation, Brad has already been accepted into the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program to work on his doctorate in biochemistry at Cambridge and conduct research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD.

Brad worked at NIH from August until November when he left for the United Kingdom to enter their doctoral program.

Of more than 200 applicants from across the nation, Brad is one of 11 accepted into the program.

The NIH-Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program funds Brad's tuition and provides a travel allowance, living stipend, and health insurance for the duration of the program.

At Cambridge, Brad is working in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Brindle at the Cambridge Department of Biochemistry studying techniques of hyperpolarized MR spectroscopy and MR spectroscopic imaging. His goal is to apply this learning in future work involving brain-specific metastasis in the laboratory of Dr. Kathleen Kelly at the National Cancer Institute.

A graduate of Bridgeport Elementary School and Cocke County High School, Class of 2005, Brad entered UTK's College Scholars Program.

According to a UT publication, while at UT-K Brad "worked with Dr. Fred Schell and Dr. David C. Baker to craft a program in structural chemistry combining chemistry, physics, and mathematics.  With particular emphasis on nuclear magnetic resonance and neutron scattering experimentation, Brad's research involved the structural characterization of aqueous solutions of amino acids and carbohydrates."

Brad's acceptance into the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program is the latest in numerous scholastic honors he has earned.

In 2008, he was one of three UT-K students awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. He was also a finalist for the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship

He has been affiliated with the Center for Molecular Biophysics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.