Why Now? Why the ?
Research on endocrine disruption ranges widely. Hunt’s and Ruderman’s colleagues range from chemists to reproductive biologists to neuroscientists to specialists on mammary glands.
“It’s such a complex field and there are so many questions. We all lean on each other. A lot of the faculty in the ECHO course entered into endocrine disruptor research [by accident],” Hunt says, adding that they wanted to give the next generation of scientists entering the field a “jump start.”
The best way to do that? “Get a lot of people who don’t normally talk to each other together to talk to each other,” says Hunt.
Both Hunt and Ruderman agreed that the was the place to make that happen.
“We know that the is the one place on Earth where graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, young faculty, and even tenured faculty can come for two, three, even six weeks and learn from faculty members from all over the world,” says Ruderman.
“This field demands a broader understanding,” says Hunt. The ECHO group is forging relationships with scientists in other courses, as well, including Frontiers in Reproduction and Embryology.
When asked, the students in the first ECHO cohort agreed. They were excited to learn, but also excited to forge a community of other researchers.