Lene Oddershede is the Senior Vice President of the Natural & Technical Sciences department at the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which encompasses the activities within the natural- and technical sciences at the Foundation and has a special focus on quantum. Lene is a member of the Executive Leadership Team of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

After obtaining a PhD degree in physics from University of Southern Danmark in 1998, Lene served group leader and finally as full Professor of Physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, until 2019 where she joined the NNF.

At the Niels Bohr Institute, Lene constructed the first optical tweezers manipulation facility in Scandinavia. The significance of this technology was acknowledged with the Nobel Prize in 2018.

Lene is a member of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences, the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters, and of the Global Future Council at the World Economic Forum (WEF). ​She has received several research prizes, e.g., the Danish Optical Society prize for young investigators, the Silver Medal of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Elite Research Prize from the Danish Research Councils.