Across biology and medicine, survival depends on the ability to respond to change: whether from injury, infection or environmental stress.

The same holds true within the larger world of academic medicine — a world turned upside down in recent months by changes to the traditional funding partnership between the government and research universities. Amid cuts and delays to grants, adaptation will be crucial to advance life-saving research and ensure a robust pipeline of future young researchers.

Fortunately, clinical leaders here at Johns Hopkins are already pursuing creative new models for funding. One example: the Center for Innovative Medicine (CIM) Next Generation Scholars program, which provides support from individual donors to early-career researchers whose work is threatened by funding cuts. To date, 15 faculty members have received funding for three years, and there are plans to add six to 10 new recipients to their ranks each year.

Crucially, all the Next Generation Scholars are part of a newly launched Academy that will equip them — primarily through mentoring from senior researchers — to explore private sources of philanthropy to support their work into the future. As Academy Director Theodore “Jack” Iwashyna explains it, “We’ve learned over the last years how much better science can be when it is done in partnership with patients and families. In these new times, there are new opportunities and needs to build partnerships between philanthropists and physicians much earlier in the physicians’ careers than has been traditional.”

Iwashyna, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and medical intensive care physician, says he envisions a “bi-directional” flow of ideas and communication between the CIM Next Generation Scholars and interested donors, as they find areas of shared interest and identify ways that philanthropy “can propel medical innovations forward for the greater good.”

Of course, there are many other adaptive efforts underway, including the Cross-Disciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences (XD-Bio), which you can read about in “Free Thinkers.” The XD-Bio program funds Ph.D. students directly through the school of medicine so they are not reliant on the usual combination of training grants and research funds. And leaders of the Johns Hopkins Medical Scientist Training program, an incubator for some of the world’s most influential M.D./Ph.D.’s over its 50-year history, are turning to alumni for support amid sharp reductions in National Institutes of Health funding.

In this period of seismic change, the spirit of adaptation that is flourishing across the Johns Hopkins enterprise offers opportunity — and reason for optimism.