This $495,808 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will fund a Research Coordination Network (RCN) led by Yale University. The RCN aims to integrate the expertise and resources of zoos and natural history museums to enhance capacity for biological collections research. Over a 5-year period, the award will support a series of 10 workshops bringing together professionals from zoos, museums, and academia across the U.S. Key objectives include developing best practices for collaboration, sample sharing, and data access, as well as identifying scientific research opportunities that leverage the combined strengths of living and preserved biological collections. By facilitating these cross-institutional partnerships, the RCN intends to expand the national infrastructure for collections-based research and enable new discoveries through greater integration of the rich data and specimens held in zoo collections.