Ask any young science faculty member what keeps them up at night, and you’re likely to get the same response every time: funding research. It is no secret that modern scientific research depends on receiving sufficient funding. In fact, grants have become so essential that the entire trajectory of one’s career in academic science is tightly linked with the ability to obtain funding. Readers who can identify with this struggle have probably asked themselves how science ended up like this, or more importantly, what, if anything, can be done about it. How to address these questions remains an ongoing conversation among those in the field—one that has become exponentially more complicated in light of recent and alarming reports in the news concerning the future of federal funding for biomedical research.