there is a close relation between some aspects of algebraic geometry (in particular, birational geometry) and symplectic geometry via gromov-witten theory. for example, kollar made some conjectures about the symplectic topology of rationally connected varieties, and ruan speculated the existence of the so-called symplectic birational geometry. a theorem of graber-harris-starr states that sections of rationally connected fibrations over a curve always exist, which has many important consequences in the theory of uniruled and rationally connected varieties. in this talk i will discuss the symplectic analogues of their result and how these results might be used to understand the conjectures of kollar and ruan.