Coos Bay native Ed O’Donnell, a molecular toxicology graduate student at Oregon State, was to mix elbows with Nobel Prize winners this week.

The 2002 Marshfield High School grad was picked to attend a meeting in Germany to forge bonds between Nobel winners and the world’s most promising young researchers. He was one of 580 young scientists from 67 countries who got to listen to their lectures, and discuss topics of current interest. Most of the laureates are in the field of chemistry, the focus of this year’s gathering.

“I’m especially looking forward to meeting the 2008 Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, who worked on the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, which I use frequently in my research,” O’Donnell said in a press release before he went.

O’Donnell, who earned a 3.97 GPA while getting a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and biophysics from OSU, hopes to become a professor and continue researching cancer. He is interested in the disease in part because a grandmother of his died of breast cancer. In his research, he is studying how nuclear receptors control cell growth and is trying to develop drugs that will control this growth.

O’Donnell works in the lab of OSU cancer biologist Siva Kolluri, who nominated him for the meeting.

“Eddie is one of the best you could ever find as a grad student,” Kolluri said. “He’s very talented, methodical and determined. He puts 100 percent into what he does. He’s generated some pretty exciting results in the lab.”

Kolluri remembers one Sunday last year when O’Donnell was working in the lab while Kolluri was writing a paper in his office.

“He ran down the hall, banged on my door and held up a paper and was breathing so hard and said, ‘Here it is. Can you believe it?’” Kolluri recalled.

O’Donnell was holding up a printout of an X-ray that showed an unexpected protein complex. Kolluri said it was an important discovery because it might lead to the development of a new cancer-fighting drug.