In conjunction with receiving the Roger V. Short Medal Award, Francesca E. Duncan, PhD, presented a decade of groundbreaking research on the ovarian microenvironment from her lab. The Duncan Lab at Northwestern Medicine discovered that the ovary becomes inflammatory, fibrotic and stiff with advanced reproductive age, and this has significant biological consequences for ovarian physiology and pathology. These findings shifted the paradigm in the field, putting forth the concept that egg quality is not only intrinsic to the gamete itself but also dependent on the microenvironment in which it grows and develops.