Interdisciplinary Collaborations and Technologies
The highest impact science occurs when traditional research areas are combined in unconventional ways. The CRS community brings together >200 faculty and >100 trainees across 18 departmental disciplines to re-think reproductive science and medicine. We have merged:
- Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility with Oncology to establish a new field of Oncofertility that impacts the clinical care of men, women, and children with fertility threatening conditions
- Reproductive Endocrinology and Structural Biology to solve the crystal structures of critical endocrine hormones
- Egg and Sperm Biology with Chemistry to identify the inorganic zinc signature of life, which holds the promise of a novel non-invasive marker of gamete quality
- Gonad and Reproductive Tract Biology with Bioengineering to generate reproductive prostheses and new methods to support in vitro gametogenesis and endocrine function
- Meiosis with Biophysics to gain unprecedented insight into the micromechanical properties of oocyte chromosomes
- Reproductive Endocrinology with Medical Anthropology to develop blood spot assays to measure reproductive function
- Reproductive Science with Communication Sciences to create new tools to teach reproductive biology across generations and audiences
Our faculty and collaborators work with a number of Northwestern programs, centers, and departments including:
- Center for Health Equity Transformation (CHET)
- Chemistry of Life Process (CLP) Program
- Driskill Graduate Program in Life Sciences
- Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering
- Graduate Program in Chemistry
- Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM)
- Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH)
- Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Graduate Program (IBiS)
- Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Feinberg School of Medicine
- Northwestern University Interdisciplinary Neuroscience (NUIN)
- Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Science in Society