Synthesis science is the process of distilling existing data, ideas, theories, or methods drawn from many sources, across multiple fields of inquiry, to accelerate the generation of new scientific knowledge, often at a broad scale. In his groundbreaking book Consilience, E.O. Wilson acknowledged both the increasing importance of synthesis science and the people who conduct it: "We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers -- people able to put together the right info at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely." Research in ecological and environmental sciences is often inherently complex and well-suited to synthesis approaches. In this session, we highlight exciting examples of synthesis science used in a variety of groundbreaking research projects over the last few decades, and in projects that are now tackling essential problems related to extreme events, resilience and human well-being. We will use case studies of past and ongoing projects to understand these teams' breakthroughs. Talks will focus on diverse and far-ranging projects, but all based on synthesis science, data science and open science methods. A panel discussion with the speakers at the end of the session will be used to distill the continued opportunities and known pitfalls of synthesis applications. All synthesis projects we will review have had ecological science questions at their core, and have been led by ecologists. Since the research also has important implications for ecosystem management and human resilience, many project teams engaged conservation practitioners, social scientists, economists, and international development experts at their inception. Attendees of this session will come away with ideas for how they can build diverse research partnerships to do synthesis science and have lasting, real-world impact for people and nature.