The goal of the Emerging Investigators Focus is to showcase some of the exciting independent work being performed by early career researchers who have already demonstrated their potential to make important contributions to their respective areas of research and have the potential to become future leaders within the field.

Since January 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically changed the landscape in which we conduct our day-to-day lives, both personally and professionally. For many researchers, laboratories were completely shut down or had very limited access for months and, for some, have still not fully reopened or returned to normal. Disproportionately affected by these hardships have been academic researchers just starting their independent careers, whose momentum was stalled during the critical period of time as they were establishing and ramping up the trajectories of their research programs.

Despite these challenges, however, we are pleased to highlight in this issue of the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry the work of 11 early career researchers, whose articles comprise the 2021 ASMS “Emerging Investigators” Focus section.

First published in 2015, the goal of the Emerging Investigators Focus is to showcase some of the exciting independent work that is being performed by early career researchers who have already demonstrated their potential to make important contributions to their respective areas of research and have the potential to become future leaders within the field.

I spoke with several Emerging Investigators featured in the Focus to learn more about their work.

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