The academic landscape has changed extensively over the past few decades for early career researchers (ECRs), defined as those within approximately the first 10 years of earning their terminal degrees. Some of these changes are for the better. There is increased awareness of unconscious bias and its impact on hiring, salary, and promotions. There is less tolerance for bullying and harassment, and greater emphasis on mental health and well-being. However, there are new obstacles facing today’s ECRs as they strive for independent careers in academia. There is reduced availability of tenure-track faculty positions relative to the number of PhD graduates; institutional support is increasingly moving toward soft-money (positions supported in large part or wholly by extramural grant funding); and funding rates by granting institutions are lower as increases in budget fail to keep up with a growing pool of applicants. And then came a global pandemic. Not surprisingly, the past year-and-a-half has been challenging for scientists at all career stages, because non-essential lab work was temporarily halted and capacity restrictions severely limited the pace of research. Even with most institutions having now returned to pre-pandemic capacity, research continues to be affected by backorders of essential laboratory products and reagents. However, ECRs have been uniquely impacted by Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows were unable to perform experiments and face delays and potential lapses in funding that are beyond their control. Junior faculty in the process of starting new laboratories and establishing independent careers, a period in which productivity is pivotal for tenure and future academic security, faced hiring freezes, ordering and pipeline restrictions, and lack of a community in which to establish collaborations with departmental colleagues. On top of this, ECRs and other investigators with infants and school-aged children suffered from the closures of daycares, schools, and the transition to virtual learning. A study published early in the pandemic reported that female scientists and researchers with children under 5 years reported the largest declines in time devoted to research during the pandemic, and the NIH recently reported that 63% of ECRs were concerned about the negative impact of the pandemic on their career trajectory. For ECRs impacted by COVID-19 laboratory closings or the impacts on childcare, the opportunity for career growth was lost at a critical stage. There have been silver linings, such as the ability to attend national and international conferences on virtual platforms that would otherwise have been financially or logistically impossible to attend, and more time with immediate family. These opportunities are of great value; however, the scale of a global pandemic cannot be downplayed. The stress of the pandemic on research productivity is amplified by the unique time in which ECRs are entering the academic arena to compete for independent funding. Funding rates in the United States remain far lower than they were a decade or two ago, when many of our senior colleagues were entering the field. This is not just perception; the NIH reported in 2014 that success rates, award rates, and funding rates were at their lowest in at least 25 years due to an increase in applicants and stagnation of NIH appropriations after 2003. It cannot be emphasized enough that the increase in grant applications over the past decade, without a comparable increase in allocated funding, has resulted in lower funding rates. This is not to say that mid-career or senior investigators do not face these same struggles for obtaining funding; they absolutely do. However, ECRs do not have a long track record of independent funding or publications and they frequently tread the fine line between proposing innovative, cutting-edge science and being over-ambitious. All scientists feel the pull of reviewe