Lessons in resilience from COVID-19

This week C&EN presents the Talented 12 class of 2025: a dozen early-career researchers who are using chemistry to do world-changing work. When the Talented 12 agree to be profiled, we give them a survey that asks them mostly fun questions. But one question is serious: Have you faced adversity in your career?One person’s response to that question reminded us that this year’s Talented 12 were doing work that would establish their careers—whether postdoctoral research or setting up independent labs—during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.These researchers may have thought the hardship of those days, when the outside world had an outsized impact on their work, were behind them. But they may have been wrong. The current US administration’s cuts to research institutions and its international policies signal that these researchers still face tremendous adversity.The COVID-19 pandemic was traumatic for early-career researchers, but one T12er also says it “made us reflect on how to be creative, not just on our research, but also on how to pivot on practical things when we were facing hurdles.” The Talented 12 regained their footing after the pandemic and found success. Could the lessons in resilience they learned help these and other early-career scientists wade through the challenging environment they face today?The first intense year of the pandemic, March 2020 to March 2021, was a period of loss and uncertainty compounded by supply chain troubles and disruptions in how the world functioned. Scientists had to figure out how to continue their research even when