EARLY CAREER RESEARCH COLLABORATIVE
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The starling murmuration is one of nature’s most mesmerizing displays — hundreds or thousands of birds moving in perfect synchronicity, creating the illusion of a single, fluid organism. This formation isn’t just beautiful; it’s functional. Each starling plays a vital role, responding to the movement of others, conserving energy, and contributing to the strength of the whole.
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At the Early Career Research Collaborative, the murmuration is our metaphor. It reflects our belief in the power of relationships within the scientific community — that when early career researchers move in connection, we amplify support, insight, and impact.
Our purpose is two-fold:
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To explore the psychosocial effects of social support in scientific contexts
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To cultivate a collaborative, connected research culture for emerging scientists
Publications
We live in a ‘publish or perish’ academic environment.
Publications are especially crucial for early career researchers
pursuing academia.
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Therefore, we want to share our talents, publish and contribute to understanding how social connection and real relationships
contribute to flourishing and resilience.
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We all come from unique backgrounds and experiences and have come together in ECRC to ‘murmer’ in support of one another.
Process
We are focused on edifying one another and practicing grace and
support among our members. We want to practice the support
we advocate. People are more important than relationships.
Our
Story
The Early Career Research Collaborative began with a moment of unexpected insight. When our founding member Hannah Lamont broke her arm, she was temporarily out of the lab — but surrounded by a strong circle of supportive family. Her quick recovery sparked a question: How does social support impact health?
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Intrigued, she reached out to Adrien, Joshua, and Hunter. Together, they began exploring the psychosocial effects of social support, using an accessible, open-source database to launch their research. What started as a simple observation turned into a shared investigation — and then a growing community.
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Today, we are the Early Career Research Collaborative: a network of emerging scientists driven by curiosity, collaboration, and a deep belief in the power of connection — in both science, health and life.
About this project:
A fulfilling life and an academic research career demand social support.
We are a diverse group of early career researchers who believe that collaboration, not competition, produces impactful research.
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We are passionate about understanding how social support relationships can buffer stressors to improve health. We are exploring variations of this research theme in the context of critical public health issues including cardiometabolic disease, cognitive decline, and sleep deprivation.
Ask the scientists:
What is the context of this research?
Life is stressful, particularly during the years of midlife. Middle age adults are often sandwiched between many competing stressors, including work, health, and care-giving.
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Our first project focuses on caregiving. Many caregivers are women who provide support to both aging parents and their own children. Prior work indicates that caregiver stress burden puts caregivers at higher risk of poor psychosocial wellbeing. However, few studies focus on the specific role that caregiving stress plays in cardiometabolic disease cognitive decline. Fewer studies have investigated the moderating effects of perceived purpose and social support on the health risks of caregiving stress.
What is the significance of this project?
According to the CDC, the number of Americans aged 65 and older is
projected to increase from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050.
While prolonged lifespan is evidence of healthcare advances, caregiver support is crucial to facilitate successful and purposeful ageing. Unpaid caregivers are a critical force within the healthcare system. Adult, middle-aged children comprise the majority of unpaid caregivers and are often best equipped to meet the individualized needs of their care recipients. Demand for elder care is expected to increase sharply with a rise in the number of Americans living with dementia. Currently, there are 7 potential family caregivers per older adult. The CDC estimates that, by 2030, there will be only 4 potential family caregivers per older adult.
What are the goals of the project?
Our current projects focus on identifying how psychosocial wellbeing and social support promotes resilience to stressors such as caregiving and poor sleep quality. We use secondary data analysis with data from the Midlife in the United States Survey (MIDUS) which includes biomarkers, survey and neuroimaging data sets. We will compare this data to the Milwaukie MIDUS sample which comprised only African American participants. We will use both cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis to determine the moderating effects of social support and perceived life purpose on cardiometabolic risk, sleep quality and cognitive decline. We will report our findings in three publications.
You can help!
As independent research scientists, we rely on crowd-funding to finance the publications and presentations of our research.
We aim to publish three manuscripts investigating the role of social support and life purpose in buffering stressors. We need to share our work at regional, national and international conferences. However, as academics, we have no funding for extra projects. We aim to raise funds to send members and lead authors to two conferences per year without personal financial burden. Click the link to learn how you can support ECRC's research!
We are using secondary analysis to publish three manuscripts:
The first is focused on the the gendered cardiometabolic disease risks of family care giving
The second is focused on the relationship between psychosocial wellbeing sleep quality and cardiometabolic disease.
The third will focus on the sex-specific role of social support in the relationship between diabetes and cognitive dysfunction.
