Editorial: Building tomorrow's biomedical workforce: advancing scholarship, innovation and systemic change

Sustaining innovation and excellence in the U.S. biomedical research enterprise depends on cultivating a skilled workforce prepared to address future challenges and excel across a growing array of professional roles. Today’s biomedical scientists face a variety of challenges across the career trajectory, including limited exposure to the full breadth of career paths, extended training timelines, heightened uncertainty around career prospects, hypercompetition, the growing instability of research funding, and exclusion of scientists from historically underrepresented groups. These issues are compounded by structural systems that under-acknowledge contributions to team science, innovation, and mentoring, relative to metrics like publications and grants (Alberts et al., 2014; Pickett et al., 2015; National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2014, 2018; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019; Council of Graduate Schools, 2025; Okahana, 2019). Addressing these challenges is essential to maintaining U.S. competitiveness and creating pathways that attract, retain, and prepare a highly talented and diverse pool of scientists contributing to the STEM workforce and broader economy (National Institutes of Health, 2012). Our Research Topic, Building Tomorrow’s Biomedical Workforce: Evaluation of How Evidence-Based Training Programs Align Skill Development and Career Awareness with a Broad Array of Professions, tackles these and other challenges, in order to develop the researchers of tomorrow.