The theme for the 16th annual Early Career Scientists Symposium 2021 was Natural History Collections: Drivers of Innovation. The symposium was originally planned for a year ago just as the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting down the United States.
Over the course of the past year, the ECSS committee and departmental staff rallied their efforts and the original speakers agreed to present the symposium in a virtual format, over five consecutive Fridays from March 5 – April 2, 2021. The symposium concentrated on innovative and unconventional uses of biological collections across scientific disciplines.
A silver lining for the online format was that the symposium reached an audience five times larger than usual, with 570 registrants and 704 attendees (not unique) altogether. Scientists tuned in from dozens of states across the country from the west coast to the east coast – the University of California to Harvard University and around the globe from Argentina and Australia to Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile and Costa Rica and beyond, including Hong Kong, India, London, Mexico, The Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago and many more. In fact, there were registrants from over 260 locations.
