For the past fifteen years, our research group has been carrying out of participatory and interdisciplinary research in the Brazilian Amazon on mercury sources, transmission and effects, with a view to developing short and long term preventive intervention strategies. Integrating the multiple voices of communities and scientists lead not only to proposals on Hg mitigation, but also to several major scientific discoveries in the natural, social and health sciences. In this panel we will examine how science benefits from this approach. Each speaker will address the following questions: What were the major scientific discoveries? How did scientist-community interaction contribute to these discoveries? How were issues raised by the population translated into scientific questions? How were disciplinary research questions influenced by working with scientists from other disciplines? How were the scientific results integrated, translated, shared and discussed with communities?