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“You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they’ve lost.”
NEW YORK — Halley Froehlich was sure she’d spend her scientific career in the United States. Her family has been in America since the 1700s.
But over the past two years, delayed federal grants and fears about the future motivated her to pack her life into boxes. She moved to Finland with her husband and daughter and is continuing her research — studying how fish, shellfish and seaweed that humans eat are responding to climate change — at the University of Helsinki.
When the Trump administration began upending U.S. scientific research last year, dismantling the federal grant-giving process and attempting to exert more political influence over what projects get funded, foreign universities saw an opportunity. They adopted programs to lure U.S. researchers abroad, promising more stable streams of funding and academic freedom.
Since then, many have taken the bait. While there is no way to quantify the overall change across the nation, scientists, researchers and professional groups say the shift is clear, unprecedented and concerning.
“You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they’ve lost,” said Tobin Smith, senior vice president of government relations and public policy for the Association of American Universities.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston said Trump is “ending waste” and is “committed to keeping America the world leader in scientific innovation, and that means funding real science.”
But more than half of American states have lost scientists to recruitment programs in other countries, according to an Ap
