Editorial: Building Tomorrow’s Biomedical Workforce: Evaluation of How Evidence-Based Training Programs Align Skill Development and Career Awareness with a Broad Array of Professions

Adriana Bankston^1*Rebekah L. Layton^2,3*Audra Van Wart^4*

• ¹AAAS/ASGCT Congressional Policy Fellow, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, United States
• ²Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
• ³Office of Biomedical Science Training and Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
• ⁴Department of Medical Science, Division of Biology and Medicine, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States

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, NASEM 2018;NASEM, 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 to contribute to the STEM workforce and broader economy (National Institutes of Health, 2012). Our collection, 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 help develop the researchers of tomorrow.Authors featured in this collection explore approaches toward effective training and education of biomedical scientists, and their preparation for STEM and research-related roles, covering the continuum of research career development from undergraduate and graduate education through postdoctoral training and early career faculty roles. In this context, our collection highlights contributions of a growing community of dedicated education researchers who are impacting pressing issues in biomedical education, training and workforce development through rigorous, evidence-based, data-driven research. By expanding the growing knowledge base in this field (Van Wart et al, 2020), we aim to support academic leaders and national changemakers in implementing transformative programs, curricula, and policies that foster the development of a robust STEM and biomedical workforce.The articles selected for inclusion in our collection clustered into three major thematic pillars: 1) career transitions, academic job market, and career outcomes; 2) career and professional skill development in programs and curricula; and 3) policies, perspectives, and theories to advance systemic change to build a thriving, diverse research training ecosystem. The first pillar examines professional development with respect to workforce trends. The second pillar combines professional development topics (including wellness and experiential learning) with program design. The third pillar highlights processes and approaches that encourage diverse perspectives and foster supportive biomedical research communities. While we hope our collection will further the growth of the field and inspire institutional reforms, concepts discussed in the articles have taken on a new dimension given the shift in federal policies that occurred shortly after publication of many of these pieces, creating uncertainty about the future of STEM training. As of this publication date, academic investigators nationwide are experiencing delays in federal grant reviews, and recent actions by the administration have led to significant science funding cuts at agencies supporting research and STEM workforce development, including the National Institutes of Health (Kozlov & Max, 2025) and National Science Foundation (Boodman & Eric, 2025). Such funding cuts have not only impacted the pursuit of research innovations at U.S. institutions, but also their educational and public service missions by limiting capacity to support trainees in their undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral research pursuits, and by delaying, canceling, or eliminating federally funded training programs designed to build a strong biomedical workforce. Still, institutions must carry forward and remain grounded in their values. Our collection offers insights that may help institutions support their missions.Publications in the first pillar focus on Career Transitions, Career Outcomes, and the Academic Job Market, exploring critical aspects of career transitions and outcomes for graduate and postdoctoral scholars, and highlighting strategies to better align academic training with long-term career success. Collins et al. (2025) synthesize existing Ph.D. career taxonomies and visualization tools to guide institutions in publishing career outcomes, thereby helping trainees make informed decisions about where to pursue their education and training. For PhD graduates interested in academic careers, Cresiski et al. (2024) address the disconnect between postdoctoral training and workforce development in higher education by offering PROMISE Academy Fellows structured exposure to diverse institution types, including tours, workshops, and speaking engagements. Flynn et al. (2024) investigate academic job market trends in biological sciences, identifying key factors influencing faculty job offers (including application volume, gender, and PEER status), and noting that completing multiple postdoctoral appointments does not necessarily improve academic hiring outcomes. Together, these studies offer practical insights for improving transparency and effectiveness in career preparation across the academic pipeline.Publications in the second pillar focus on Career and Professional Skill Development in Programs and Curricula, highlighting the need for student-centered training that will provide professional skills and competencies needed to succeed in transitioning from academic training into the workforce. Focusing on transferable professional skills, Nguyen (2024) introduce a cohort-based design thinking program for postdoctoral scholars that fosters professional skill development, community building, and belonging -key factors for career preparation. Similarly, Salm and McKinney (2024) 2025) explore ways to promote independence in early-career researchers through multi-institutional workshops that revealed barriers to and solutions for developing the independence of thought needed to advance in academic careers. Likewise, Neely et al. (2025) evaluate the long-running OPTIONS program, demonstrating how experiential learning and reflection can build career readiness across doctoral programs. Identifying a need to establish and more structurally measure progress on career and professional development programs, Davidson et al. (2024) introduce customized qualifying exams to include student-centered, career-aligned competencies, thereby improving their individual relevance without increasing burden. Together, these studies offer innovative, scalable strategies for enhancing the professional and career preparedness of biomedical trainees.Publications in the third pillar focus on Policies, Perspectives, and Theories to Advance Systemic Change to Build a Thriving Research Training Ecosystem, aiming to promote the use of theory-driven, evidence-based practices in decision-making across higher education. Brandt and Robinson (2024) emphasize the scholarly potential of program directors for collecting and disseminating the data needed to effect institutional change. They advocate for practitioner-scholar models in which academic leaders actively engage in publishing on training innovations, and provide examples of contributions to institutional improvement and influence on national policies. Continuing with the theme of structural change, several articles identify opportunities for promoting inclusive and equitable training experiences. Baldwin-Sorelle and McDonald (2024) focus on the experiences of LGBTQ+ graduate students, highlighting safety and inclusion challenges in academia and offering recommendations for improved classroom and lab environments. Black and Montgomery (2025) argue for multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks to guide systemic change in academic settings, introducing the "groundskeeping" framework as a strategy for driving equity-focused institutional reform. They offer a step-by-step roadmap and national examples to guide institutions and scientific organizations in assessing current practices to move toward systemic change, dismantling structural barriers, and fostering sustainable, inclusive environments. With the potential to inform and improve national funding models, Torres et al. (2024) perform a literature review that examines structural inequities in STEM research funding for trainee-caregivers, especially women, and propose actionable policies to promote inclusion, improve transparency, and support more equitable institutional funding outcomes. Focusing on the role of mentorship, Packard et al. (2025) propose a systems-level approach to mentoring through a STEM mentoring ecosystems framework, which emphasizes shifting from isolated efforts to coordinated, institution-wide strategies supporting workforce diversification, collaboration, and long-term mentoring effectiveness. Finally, two articles examine the impact of academic recruitment approaches for promoting and sustaining a diverse STEM workforce. Arruda et al. (2025) examine long-term outcomes of institutional recruitment and student support strategies, showing success in retaining a diverse biomedical workforce and providing rare longitudinal data on academic persistence by race, ethnicity, and gender. Finally, Cho et al. (2025) present successful holistic admissions and recruitment practices in academia, demonstrating how intentional design can result in improved retention of students with diverse identities and perspectives in research careers. Together, these studies offer actionable frameworks and datadriven insights for building more inclusive, equitable, and effective research training environments.The manuscripts published in our collection collectively argue for a critical need to develop structured and improved support mechanisms for academic and non-academic career transitions, professional skill development, systemic policy changes, and inclusivity within biomedical training. This collection underscores the need for evidence-based institutional training programs that enhance career awareness, skill-building, and mentoring for trainees, while also addressing psychosocial factors and structural barriers influencing their career trajectories. Additionally, the research results presented by our authors emphasize the positive impact which inclusive policies, community-building initiatives, and systemic interventions and their implementation, can have in fostering a diverse, equitable, and well-trained biomedical workforce that is well-prepared to address societal challenges.The biomedical research ecosystem nationwide faces growing challenges in implementing both innovative strategies, and building upon long-established practices that build much needed skills, foster supportive training environments, as well as recruit and retain trainees in scientific fields (Mervis, 2025). This culture change needs a strong focus on ensuring that trainees from multiple backgrounds can join and contribute to the scientific community (Asai, 2020). We also need to broaden the pool of investigators receiving federal research funding and those who review and manage these awards, in order to create a robust STEM workforce at multiple levels (Bernard, Johnson, Hopkins-Laboy and Tabak, 2021). Recently, federal funding for several long-standing programs aimed at advancing a more inclusive scientific research pipeline has been delayed or terminated, leaving institutions with the difficult task of having to fill the gaps in research training that were once supported by these awards. These programs previously supported by federal grant mechanisms include training grants that facilitate development of cohort-based support networks, faculty-based research awards and associated diversity supplements, as well as trainee fellowships. If intentional efforts are not made to create an environment where trainees can thrive from every background, we will lose top talent from our research laboratories and institutions. Coupled with broader cuts to research funding, many institutions are now admitting fewer graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, which means that fewer talented scientists are entering and remaining in research careers long-term (Molteni, McFarling & Chen, 2025). For trainees that do enter the research pipeline, there is an immediate need and opportunity to prepare them for a wide range of careers that may include non-academic routes in the United States at a time when science funding is scarce and STEM talent may be lost to other countries (Patel, 2025). Over the long term, the loss could compound to negatively impact innovation and productivity, and reduce the resiliency of the biomedical research enterprise.As the research enterprise evolves, academic training programs will need to adapt to meet shifting demands of today's dynamic federal policy environment. This evolution requires a sustained national commitment to researching and advancing evidence-based practices in training and career development, to support a robust biomedical workforce. By building on past successes and integrating proven strategies, we can avoid repeating known pitfalls and advance scalable, high-impact solutions grounded in strong federal investments. Institutions can partner with funding agencies and private funders to test training innovations, support rigorous research training programs, enhance opportunities, and collect national data important for understanding workforce development. Our collection supports the broader goal of building and sustaining a strong biomedical research workforce by showcasing innovative programs and elevating diverse perspectives in academia that foster creativity, resilience, and progress in scientific careers.A key aim of our collection has been increasing the visibility of scholarship in biomedical academic training and education as an emerging discipline, which may strengthen efforts to sustain the biomedical workforce across multiple career paths. We hope that our collection will catalyze similar future efforts from scholars and practitioners by providing data-driven insights and promoting the dissemination and implementation of effective educational practices and frameworks to prepare the workforce for tomorrow's challenges. In today's turbulent federal policy environment, the systemic changes outlined in several articles from our collection are essential to help the biomedical research enterprise respond effectively to current challenges and build a resilient, future-ready workforce. This collection is intended to be accessible and valuable to a wide range of audiences, while providing insights for academic leaders and federal decision-makers whose influence can positively shape the biomedical research ecosystem through effective implementation.